Justice Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court for 27 years - and now says he wants to serve another three decades.

“I’m not retiring,” Thomas, 70, a staunch conservative, said at Pepperdine University School of Law, Law360 reported . Thomas was responding to a question about who he would want to speak at his retirement party in 20 years.

When the moderator expanded the retirement timeline to 30 years in the future, Thomas did not budge. That would bring Thomas up to an 100 years old. The longest-serving Supreme Court justice was William O. Douglas who was on the court for 36 years and seven months from 1939 to 1975.

There were no signs Thomas was considering retiring from the Supreme Court but some had speculated that he could leave the bench while President Trump was still in the White House so a new conservative justice could be nominated.

Thomas was picked by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 when Thurgood Marshall, a liberal and the first black Supreme Court justice - Thomas was the second - retired.

[Related: Trump 'saving' Amy Coney Barrett for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat]