Justice Samuel Alito is pushing back hard against CNN Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic, calling her characterization of him as a brooding, grievance-laden justice unfair and without evidence. He made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with Kyle Peterson of the Wall Street Journal, conducted to discuss Alito’s new book.
Peterson read Alito a passage from a Biskupic book that described the justice as wearing “a heavy cloak of grievance as if perpetually wronged, destined to be misunderstood.” Biskupic has made similar claims before. In a December 2025 column, she wrote that Alito “often grimaces and rolls his eyes” on the bench and that other justices appear “accustomed to his unguarded irritability.” She offered no sourcing beyond her own courtroom observations.
Alito didn’t hold back. “I think that’s very unfair, and it is part of a process of caricaturing the justices with whom the people who are writing these things disagree,” he told Peterson. He pointed out that colleagues who have delivered “blistering dissents” and made “very angry comments during oral argument” have never received the same treatment in print.
He explained that oral argument is serious business to him, not a performance. “I don’t treat oral argument like a moot court. I don’t treat it like a show. I don’t play to the audience. I don’t try to get laughs,” he said. “It’s pretty businesslike, and perhaps that’s what they’re referring to.” He said court watchers see him almost exclusively during oral argument and little else, making sweeping judgments about his temperament hard to justify.
Coverage of Justice Alito and Joan Biskupic’s reporting on the Supreme Court has drawn attention from legal observers who say body-language analysis substitutes for actual sourcing. Biskupic has not had the kind of insider access to the Court she once did, and critics argue her columns now rely on visual impressions rather than reporting.
Alito also addressed a separate episode involving NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, who published a report last year that Alito was planning to retire. NPR quickly retracted the story. “I was amused and puzzled,” Alito told USA Today in written answers. “I wondered what had led to the erroneous report. And when the error was corrected, I wondered how many people were crestfallen.”
The 76-year-old justice is widely seen as one of the Court’s most reliable conservative votes, and his continued presence on the bench carries significant weight for the Court’s ideological balance. His comments to the Wall Street Journal offer a rare direct response from a sitting justice to a named reporter’s coverage, and they’ve already drawn attention across legal and media circles. Share your take on this story in the comments or on social media.
