Editor’s Note: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by former President George W. Bush, has been called “the court’s most consistent conservative” on the 6:3 U.S. Supreme Court. At a time when many observers are looking to the Judicial Branch as a potential backstop against unchecked power, it is worth hearing what he has to say the state of U.S. democracy and the unchecked power of the presidency.
January 14, 2026—In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito suggested that American democracy is “still strong” because “we have elections.”
“The institutions are working at a certain level. But I think there are serious strains. I hope it’s the product of a particular era that is going to end when things settle down. But right now there are serious, I think, strains on the way our constitutional system is working.”
Decree by Executive Order
The United States is established as a democratic republic with separation of powers by three branches of government. Increasingly, however, presidents are exerting more authority. For his part, President Donald Trump is pushing the limits beyond past precedent.
To date in his second term, Trump has signed 225 executive orders in his first year in office of his second term. That’s nearly double the 162 executive orders that former President Joe Biden signed during his entire four years.
In the interview with Corriere Della Sera, Alito expressed concern about the extension of Executive-Branch power, compared to the Legislature. He suggested that the Judicial Branch is caught in between.
“It’s very, it’s very, very, very hard to get things enacted by Congress, and therefore presidents are extending their powers to the limit, if not beyond the limit, and judges sometimes are exceeding their powers, and things that the President does are challenged in court. So we have constant, this constant conflict, potentially, between the President and courts and none of that is good.”
Executive Branch Rule by Regulation
Asked whether the goal of restoring the Constitution needs Congress to better exercise its power, Alito said “yes.”
“Yes, because our Constitution was based on the scheme of government set up… to envision laws made by Congress or by the officials who are elected by the people. What has happened over the course of the 20th century is that Congress has delegated its authority to the executive branch. And right now, because of the polarization in the country, it’s almost impossible to get things through Congress. So as a result, the executive agencies make most of the law. If you look at the end of any year, and if you just stacked up all the regulations that they’ve issued and compare that to laws Congress has passed, the regulations are many, many times bigger. And what we have seen increasingly over the last 10 years is an inclination by presidents to try to do more and more and more, using their own power, or what they believe to be their own power.”
On Immigration
Alito is a third-generation immigrant. His grandparents and father were born in Italy. His father changed his name from Salvatore Alati to Samuel Alito when he arrived in the United States at Ellis Island. Alito’s mother was born in the United States to Italian immigrants.
Asked about his Italian heritage, Alito says it is “quite important” to him while noting that his parents’ generation “americanized.” “There was a lot of pressure at that time to adopt American ways, American habits, even to the point of changing people’s names,” he said.
On Faith and Christian Roots of the U.S. Constitution
“It influences, of course, who I am as a person. So it reminds me of the need to treat everybody with dignity and to treat everybody as as a child of God, which is what I think we all are, and to be honest in what I do, and to be faithful to the duties that I have as a judge. What it doesn’t do is what Catholics in the United States have been accused of doing from the very beginning, which is imposing their religious views on the country. I don’t have authority to do that. That is contrary to what I swore I would do when I became a judge, which is to uphold the Constitution of the United States and its laws. I don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that’s inconsistent with Catholic teaching. And in fact, I think that the Constitution was a product of what was at the time of its adoption an overwhelmingly Christian society, and a fairly devoutly Christian society, not Catholic, there were hardly any Catholics but nevertheless, Christian. For example, our idea that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, it’s an Enlightenment idea. But I think it entered the Enlightenment through Europe’s Christian heritage.”
For more, see the full interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
