--- title: Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Helped Him Make Decisions description: Justice Samuel Alito has revealed he had a rather unusual decision making process that involved his late springer spaniel, Zeus canonical: https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/ author: Kate Samuelson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-04-21T16:15:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-31T10:55:00.691Z article:section: Politics og:title: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Zeus Helped Him Make Decisions og:description: “Late at night... I would test out my ideas with Zeus" og:url: https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7f887aa0230bd27/6988c3f2ab6d772d6a6adc18/gettyimages-511846028.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Supreme Court Justice Alito Gives Talk At Georgetown Law School og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Zeus Helped Him Make Decisions twitter:description: “Late at night... I would test out my ideas with Zeus" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7f887aa0230bd27/6988c3f2ab6d772d6a6adc18/gettyimages-511846028.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Zeus Helped Him Make Decisions by [Kate Samuelson](https://time.com/author/kate-samuelson/) ## Kate Samuelson Apr 21, 2017 4:15 PM UTC  U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito speaks during the Georgetown University Law Center's third annual Dean's Lecture to the Graduating Class in the Hart Auditorium in McDonough Hall February 23, 2016 in Washington, DC. U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito speaks during the Georgetown University Law Center's third annual Dean's Lecture to the Graduating Class in the Hart Auditorium in McDonough Hall February 23, 2016 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images by [Kate Samuelson](https://time.com/author/kate-samuelson/) ## Kate Samuelson Apr 21, 2017 4:15 PM UTC [Justice Samuel Alito](http://time.com/4708593/justice-john-roberts-trump-attacks/) revealed he used to have a rather unusual decision making process that involved his late [springer spaniel](http://time.com/4547310/americas-canine-protectors/), Zeus. Speaking to D. Brooks Smith, chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a conversation reported on by the [Wall Street _Journal_](https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2017/04/21/with-court-at-full-strength-alito-foresees-more-aggressive-conservative-majority/), Alito revealed that he used to “test out” ideas on his dog, before he passed away. “Late at night when I was thinking about cases I would test out my ideas with Zeus. He generally agreed with me,” he said. Alito also revealed that if he was stuck on a particularly difficult case, he had a “special way” of making a decision. “I put the red \[respondent’s\] brief over here and the blue \[petitioner’s\] brief over there, equal distance from Zeus, and I’d put a few dog treats on both. Then I would let Zeus go,” he said. “If he went to blue brief, then we would reverse.” At a lunch meeting at the Roger Williams University School of Law in 2012, [Alito joked](http://law.rwu.edu/story/justice-alito-rwu-law-pt-2) that he had used that process to help him come to a decision in the 2010 case of [_U.S. v. Stevens_](https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-v-Stevens), leading him to be the sole dissenter. In the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/"},"headline":"Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Zeus Helped Him Make Decisions","datePublished":"2017-04-21T16:15:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T10:55:00.691Z","description":"“Late at night... I would test out my ideas with Zeus\"","url":"https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/","keywords":["Supreme Court","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7f887aa0230bd27/6988c3f2ab6d772d6a6adc18/gettyimages-511846028.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Kate Samuelson","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/kate-samuelson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte7f887aa0230bd27/6988c3f2ab6d772d6a6adc18/gettyimages-511846028.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Supreme Court Justice Alito Gives Talk At Georgetown Law School","caption":"Supreme Court Justice Alito Gives Talk At Georgetown Law School","creditText":"Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/supreme-court/","name":"Supreme Court"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4750346/justice-samuel-alito-dog-zeus-supreme-court/","name":"Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dog Zeus Helped Him Make Decisions"}}]}] ```