Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is open-eyed about the ongoing “war” for the future of the United States — and he wants his law clerks to do their jobs with that same awareness. As a consequence, Alito clerkships are not just some prestigious stepping stone to a high-paying, cushy legal career, but rather part of an existential ideological battle for preserving the Constitution and therefore the republic.
In her new book, Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution, The Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway revealed how Alito thinks about the role of his clerks — and by extension his role as a justice. One insider interviewed for the book described Alito’s clerks as the “Green Berets” of the nation’s high court.
“Sam wants clerks to recognize that this is war, that they’re on the same page and fighting for America, not their future careers,” a friend of Alito’s told Hemingway for the book.
Other media also picked up on the revelation, such as Newsweek, which noted Alito’s clerks are positioned to be “an elite team expected to strengthen any position it joins.” Clerks are an integral part of the court’s work. They screen petitions for the court to hear, conduct legal research, balance inputs from the other justices on opinions, draft opinions, prepare questions for oral arguments, and more. But the clerks must also fight against outside forces like politicians, activists, and the media, which Alito sees as waging a continuous assault on the role of the court.
That dynamic became quite clear during the internal fights over the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, authored by Alito, which overturned Roe v. Wade. The draft opinion was infamously leaked to the press, but the release of the opinion was also stalled for months by the liberal justices as the media whipped up a frenzy against the conservatives on the court.
“Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome,” Hemingway wrote. Left-wing violence and threats spiraled out of control as a means to intimidate the justices into ruling a different way.
In her book, Hemingway wrote about how Alito views intimidation, along with threats of court-packing and impeachment, as intended to threaten justices to do the political bidding of the left, Newsweek recounted. Those threats break down the barrier that once protected the high court from politics.
Hemingway also noted how the Dobbs leak and subsequent violence, which destroyed trust and collegiality among the justices, provided more proof than ever that the court’s position outside of politics was under intense threat. Seemingly, some inside the court were willing to participate in a pressure campaign — putting their colleagues’ lives on the line — in order to obtain a political outcome.
The “war” is ideological at root, but increasingly physical as well if the intimidation tactics continue.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
