Which Supreme Court justices will resign during Trump's term?

**Stage 1 — Blind analysis (ignore market price):**

Clarence Thomas is currently an elderly, long-tenured justice (born June 1948, turning 78 in June 2026) with no public retirement plans or announced health problems. Historically, Supreme Court justices' departures cluster around advanced age and/or health decline, opportunistic retirements when a friendly president can appoint a like-minded successor, or very rarely, forced departures (impeachment/removal). Thomas has a well-documented pattern of weathering sustained controversy and retaining his seat rather than stepping down; he has not previously signaled an intention to leave and has resisted pressure in the past. The credible impeachment effort filed in 2024 increased scrutiny, but impeachment is procedurally difficult and historically uncommon as a mechanism to induce resignation.

Balancing forces: *health/age* and *continued controversy* increase the chance of a retirement/resignation before Jan 20, 2029, but *political incentives* (a Republican president in the White House through 2029) decrease the incentive for Thomas to step down to avoid a Democratic replacement. Given his demonstrated preference to remain on the bench through controversies and the fact that a Republican occupant reduces the strategic need to time a resignation, the net likelihood that Thomas will voluntarily resign during this roughly 2.6–3 year window is modest.

Quantitative intuition: mortality risk for a 78-year-old male over ~2.6 years is nontrivial (single-digit percent), but death does not count as a resignation. Historical retirement/resignation rates for justices in their late 70s over a ~3-year horizon vary, but many have been inclined to stay, especially when the White House is ideologically aligned. Combining (a) low-to-moderate baseline retirement propensity, (b) Thomas' personal track record of tenure through controversy, and (c) absent credible new health or formal retirement signals, I place an independent probability at **18%** that he will resign during Trump’s term.

**Stage 2 — Market calibration (look at market price Yes = 33%):**

The market currently prices a ~33% chance — substantially above my 18% estimate. Possible reasons for the higher market price: - *Recency bias and over-weighting of controversy*: traders may anchor on the 2024 impeachment effort and ongoing media controversies and infer a higher near-term resignation risk than warranted by behavior and incentives. - *Event hedging and headline trading*: some traders may buy Yes contracts as short-term hedges against shocks or because they expect a single leak or damaging revelation could rapidly force a resignation; such strategies can bid up the price beyond the structural likelihood. - *Asymmetric payoff chasing*: Yes contracts are binary and attractive to traders who expect a small but news-triggered chance of immediate resignation; this can push price above the more conservative, structural estimate.

Reasons market could be right (and I could be wrong): - A substantive new disclosure or health event could dramatically increase the genuine probability in a short time; markets price the possibility of such jumps. - Insider information or bettors close to the parties could be driving the price if they have private knowledge of Thomas’ intentions (I see no public evidence of this).

My conclusion: the market appears to be *overpricing* the resignation probability based on the publicly observable structural factors and Thomas' past behavior. The gap (~15 percentage points) looks explainable by sentiment-driven order flow and hedging demand rather than new factual information. That said, the market rationally prices the small chance of sudden developments; if you trade against it, you must be comfortable with tail-risk from a disclosure or health event that could flip the outcome quickly.