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Even amid a government shutdown, the justices are maintaining their brisk travel schedules. What a treat it is to be a justice. And if you listen closely to what they’re saying in interviews and lectures, you can learn about some of the less-than-ethical tricks they’ve pulled over the years.
For example, when Justice Barrett was speaking with the National Review this month, she mentioned and seemed to absolve Justice Scalia’s famous “personal hospitality” trick, where he’d be flown out to a university to give a talk (fine) but afterwards would go on a free hunting trip nearby that he wouldn’t report as a gift on his financial disclosure, even though the hunting lodge was often a corporation and not a person who can bestow personal hospitality exempt from disclosure.
Then Justice Sotomayor offered this nugget last week in Boston: “I tell law students, even the ones who have worked for me as interns, when they did — now they don’t let me hire them; it’s a long story. But for many, many years, I would hire interns…” Wait, what?
You heard that right. Sotomayor from 2009 to 2014 hired unpaid interns, though the program was shut down by an unnamed person or persons after word got out that the 20-somethings were bringing her snacks and driving her around without compensation.
Soon after, she helped set up a different paid-slash-for-credit internship program that places students in courthouses nationwide. Fine. But several of the sponsors of its annual gala, held on Oct. 15, are law firms with cases currently at SCOTUS. Not fine!
It’s also worth mentioning that in a different interview, Justice Barrett threw cold water on Fix the Court’s idea to create a Supreme Court Records Act, where the justices’ papers would become property of the U.S. after they retired, like a president’s upon leaving office, and then would then become public 12 years post-retirement.
Some justices have demanded their papers remain private for 50 years after they become ghosts (i.e., die; just going with the theme here). Opacity at its finest! |
