Justice Samuel Alito says the Supreme Court majority showed real courage overturning Roe v. Wade, even as physical threats and harassment became a disturbing new danger to the courts.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News that the 2022 Dobbs decision required courage from every justice in the majority, and he warned that physical threats now endanger the judiciary itself. The full interview airs Monday as the Court opens its 2026-2027 term, and Daily Caller reporting captured his blunt assessment of the costs.

Alito, the 76-year-old George W. Bush appointee who wrote the majority opinion, did not soft-pedal what followed the ruling. He lost friends. Justices faced harassment. Security became a daily reality.

The Court returned abortion policy to the states in June 2022. That move ended nearly 50 years of federal judicial control and handed the issue back to voters and legislatures. Alito made plain that the justices knew the stakes once the draft leaked.

Courage meant finishing the job after the leak

Alito pointed straight at Dobbs as the clearest test. He told the network the majority had to press ahead even after the draft opinion spilled into public view.

"We didn’t know it when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications."

Just the News carried his fuller framing: Dobbs stood as the leading example of courage required from all the justices in the majority. They did not grasp every consequence when the draft first circulated, yet they still delivered the opinion.

That draft had already set off a firestorm. In May 2022, POLITICO reported it had obtained the initial majority opinion before any official release. Early drafts of Supreme Court opinions had not leaked in the Court’s modern history. National Review described the breach as an earthquake that would destroy trust among justices and staff, calling it the gravest unforgivable sin against the institution’s tradition of secrecy. Alito’s draft language was direct: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”

An eight-month internal investigation followed. Investigators conducted 126 formal interviews. The January 2023 public report stated they had not identified the leaker. The breach still hangs over the Court.

Alito has also made clear he intends to keep serving, a stance that matches earlier signals when Alito confirmed he will stay on the bench.

Threats turned personal and physical fast

The danger did not stay abstract. In June 2022, U.S. Marshals encountered Nicholas Roske outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland house. Roske, a 29-year-old California resident, carried a tactical knife, a firearm, and dozens of rounds of ammunition. He said he was upset over the leaked Dobbs draft. He later pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate Kavanaugh and received an eight-year prison sentence in October 2025.

Alito called the broader pattern something new and alarming.

"The physical threats and the harassment represents something new in our society and something that is quite disturbing... And I think it’s a danger to the courts, and I think it’s a danger to others in public life."

He told CBS he lost friends over the decision. The harassment and threats, he said, now pose a danger well beyond any single case.

Other justices have described the same pressure. In a July 14, 2026, House Appropriations Committee hearing, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett asked for a 10 percent increase in Supreme Court security funding for fiscal year 2027. Kagan told the panel that threats against the Court rose 35 percent in 2026 and 25 percent the year before.

Barrett put the cost in family terms.

"didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one."

Those are not normal working conditions for judges who decide cases under the Constitution. They are the price of a ruling that rejected nearly five decades of invented federal power over abortion.

Retirement speculation has followed Alito for years, yet he has continued to shut it down, including when he swatted down retirement talk and prepared for another term.

Public tolerance for political violence splits hard by ideology

The climate around the Court sits inside a wider problem. After the September 10, 2025, assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a YouGov poll measured attitudes toward political violence. Twenty-five percent of respondents who called themselves “very liberal” disagreed with the statement that “political violence is never justified.” Only 3 percent of those who identified as “very conservative” took the same position.

That gap matters. Justices who restore the Constitution to the states now need bulletproof vests and extra marshals. A sizable slice of one political side still refuses to rule violence out. The numbers do not invent themselves.

Meanwhile, Republican senators treated Dobbs as the historic pro-life victory it was. They introduced a resolution celebrating the decision and the 50-year effort to protect the unborn and restore state authority. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said the ruling empowered volunteers who defend the right to life across states, religions, and backgrounds. Fox News reported the measure and its long list of GOP cosponsors.

Conservative justices have faced institutional headwinds on other fronts too. Justice Clarence Thomas has noted that elite law schools remain largely closed to conservative voices, a point he made when Thomas described elite schools as off limits for those views.

The term opens under the same pressure

Alito’s interview lands as the Court begins a new term Monday. His book “So Ordered” is scheduled for release Tuesday. The justice who authored Dobbs is still explaining why the majority finished the work after the leak, and why the threats that followed remain a danger to courts and public life.

The sequence is straightforward. A draft leaked. An armed man appeared at a justice’s home. Threat numbers climbed year after year. Justices asked Congress for more security money. One justice had to explain a bulletproof vest to her children. Alito calls the pattern disturbing and new. The record supports him.

Other justices have stepped into the public conversation in different ways. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently discussed impartiality on a high-profile podcast, a moment when Jackson talked impartiality and drew conservative notice.

Dobbs did what the Constitution required. It ended a judicial takeover of abortion policy and returned the question to the people and their elected representatives. The courage Alito describes was the decision to draft that holding and then stand by it after the leak, the threats, and the personal costs.

Political violence and targeted harassment have no place against judges who do their jobs. The justices who corrected Roe faced both and still delivered the opinion the law demanded. That is the standard. Anything less invites more pressure on the next hard case.