by Ben Whedon
Supreme Court Associated Justice Samuel Alito was brought to a hospital in March after falling ill during a Philadelphia event, CNN reported, citing “people with knowledge” of the matter.
Alito, 76, is one of the court’s most conservative-leaning justices. He reportedly became ill at a March 20 dinner for the Federalist Society. Alito was taken to the hospital, but returned to his home in Virginia the same evening.
The news of the incident comes as the midterm races heat up and the prospect of a Republican-held Senate becomes less secure. Some conservative pundits have urged Alito and Clarence Thomas to step down while President Donald Trump could appoint their successors, so as to avoid the fate of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Trump replaced with Amy Coney Barrett.
“Clarence Thomas is a brilliant man and one of the greatest justices of all time. He also needs to retire immediately,” the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh asserted this month. “He’s 77 years old. If Democrats win the midterms and then the presidency, which they very likely could, there’s a significant chance they will get to replace him with another Kentanji Brown Jackson. That would be a disaster for the country. We need to get young conservatives on the court right now. Alito, too. He’s 76.”
The presidents who appointed the most Supreme Court justices were George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, each appointing eight justices. William Howard Taft and Andrew Jackson are tied in second place with the appointment of five justices. If Trump is able to appoint another Supreme Court justice, it would tie him for third-most in American history, with four justices, along with Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower.
The oldest Supreme Court justice to ever serve on America’s highest judicial court was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. at almost 91 years old in 1932.
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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Photo “Justice Samuel Alito” by Italy in US. CC BY-ND 2.0.
