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

Alito is old enough that a resignation within the remaining Trump term is certainly possible, but age alone does not make it likely on this time horizon. Supreme Court justices often serve well into their late 70s and 80s, and Alito has shown no public signal of imminent departure; absent a major health event, the default expectation should be that he stays. The strongest reason to think about resignation is strategic timing, since a conservative justice may prefer to lock in a like-minded replacement while a Republican president is in office, but that logic only matters if he actually intends to leave soon, which is not currently evident.

The market’s 63% Yes price looks aggressive relative to the underlying demographics and institutional behavior. A 76-year-old justice is not beyond retirement age, but the remaining window is only about 2.4 years, and resignations by sitting justices are still relatively uncommon events. Because the market question is specifically about resignation during Trump’s term, it does not benefit from the broader possibility that Alito could eventually leave later; it requires a fairly near-term and somewhat binary personal decision. That makes the true probability meaningfully lower than the market implies unless there is private information about health or personal plans that has not surfaced publicly.

If the market is assigning a high probability, it may be implicitly betting on a health-driven or politically timed retirement, or on the idea that Alito views this as the last safe window to preserve his seat’s ideological successor. I think those arguments exist, but they are not strong enough to justify a probability above 50% without clearer signals. My independent view is that the event is more likely than not to be No, though not by a huge margin because the age and strategic incentives do keep Yes on the table.