Published this week, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country by Justice Samuel Alito (Basic Liberty, 2026). Here is the book description from Amazon:
Justice Samuel A. Alito elaborates on his judicial philosophy and reflects on the roles of the law, the Constitution, and the courts in preserving America’s spirit of liberty.
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Samuel A. Alito has quietly become one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in recent history. In this surprisingly personal book, he vigorously defends his “originalist” approach to the Constitution, identifies the threats to our liberties, and reflects on faith, the nature of law, and American culture.
Twenty years on the high court have given Justice Alito a unique perspective on the country’s fiercest legal and constitutional battles. As America’s culture wars unfolded, one side harnessed the power of the judiciary to impose its agenda, abetted by judges scornful of constitutional constraints and untroubled by doubts about their own infallibility. The response was a legal movement devoted to originalism and textualism, which found its most effective champion in Justice Alito.
The battles, of course, are far from over. Free speech and religion, in particular, are frequently under fire. Justice Alito offers a compelling vision of the courts’ role in defending these and other fundamental liberties.
In So Ordered, one of our greatest jurists celebrates the complexity and brilliance of the American Constitution.
Here are a few among many reactions:
At Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin, Justice Alito on Originalism (commenting on Justice Alito’s Wall Street Journal article derived from the book):
[On originalism, Alito] raises more questions than compelling answers. Nonetheless, he makes a number of interesting points, about how to do originalism generally, and about specific constitutional issues. Here, I note a few of particular interest.
In The Atlantic, Jack Goldsmith: Zombie Originalism – Samuel Alito’s efforts to revamp the conservative legal philosophy reveal that a new movement is ascendant.
Close observers of the Court have long seen Alito as a skeptic of orthodox originalism, and So Ordered, far from a paean to the philosophy, delivers a vigorous critique. In its place, Alito offers an approach that at times sounds like a conservative version of the judicial activism that originalism aimed to combat when liberals held sway on the Court. And the style of judging he defends, which he has practiced for decades, has now acquired currency: It dovetails with a Trump-era New Right conception of law that is unshackled by restraint and focused solely on conservative victory.
At Civitas Outlook, Charles Stimson: Justice Alito: Originalist in Full.
Justice Samuel A. Alito’s new book, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, is not a conventional judicial memoir—and that is precisely its strength. It is a carefully curated collection of 19 lectures and speeches delivered between 2007 and 2025 on subjects constitutional and cultural, solemn and unexpectedly personal. Organized around five themes, the volume offers something rarer than autobiography: a sustained encounter with the mind of one of the Supreme Court’s most consequential jurists.
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Chapter One opens with a deceptively simple question: How should a judge interpret the Constitution? Alito’s answer—originalism—is familiar. His treatment is not. Rather than offer another abstract defense of original public meaning, he asks what originalism looks like when practiced by judges who must decide actual cases, respect precedent, secure colleagues’ votes, and live with the consequences of their rulings.
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Chapter Two is at once a tribute, an intellectual history, and a warning. Its subject is Antonin Scalia—his methods, manner, and continuing influence—but its real concern is the rule of law. Alito argues that Scalia rescued statutory interpretation from an undisciplined search for legislative purpose, restored enacted text to its rightful place, and constrained judges who might otherwise mistake policy preferences for law.
Yet some of Scalia’s heirs, Alito warns, have carried textualism beyond its sound foundations into “hypertextualism,” a cramped method that ignores how language communicates meaning.
Posted at 6:04 AM