The Supreme Grifters Keep on Grifting

Only three months into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first Supreme Court term, she announced a book deal negotiated by the same powerhouse lawyer who represented the Obamas and James Patterson.

The deal was worth about $3 million, according to people familiar with the agreement, and made Justice Jackson the latest Supreme Court justice to parlay her fame into a big book contract.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch had made $650,000 for a book of essays and personal reflections on the role of judges, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a $2 million advance for her forthcoming book about keeping personal feelings out of judicial rulings. Those newer justices joined two of their more senior colleagues, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, in securing payments that eclipse their government salaries.
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One area of particular concern, experts said, is how justices have used court resources to bolster their book ventures, which is paid work that falls outside the scope of their court work.
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Other federal judges are bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which lays out guidelines and rules for judicial conduct. One of the tenets focuses on a judge’s use of court resources for outside activities. The rule says that “a judge should not to any substantial degree use judicial chambers, resources or staff to engage in extrajudicial activities.”

I understand that the audience for a book of memoirs, stories or legal thoughts by a sitting Supreme Court justice is greater than that for a Harlan County judge. That's life.

But what is troubling are two things: First off, and not just for writing books, the justices allegedly treat the court staff as servants to satify their whims. When the court staff is arranging private travel for justices or helping them on their books (or, possibly, ghosting on the books), the justices should reimburse the Treasury for the their time. The hammer here should be that if the Supreme Court staff has time time to spend Lord-knows-how-many hours doing side work for the justices, then there are too many people working there and there should be some RIFs.

Using the time of civil servants for somebody's private work is theft (unless that is explicitly within the job descriptions of said civil servants). The justices so using their staff as unpaid researches or travel agents or dogsbodies are criminals.

Second, then comes when the books are offered for sale. If there are bulk purchases,[1] that's pretty skeevy, because monied players are, in short, laundering their gifts to the justices through royalty payments.

The second point is probably uncontrollable, but we can mock it all we want. As to the first, that can be addressed and should be. Johnny Roberts seems to be content to do nothing more than wring his hands while his Court of Grifters and Their Spouses continue to drive down the Court's reputation to a par with drug dealers and hooptie salesmen.
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[1] This is a common occurrance on the far-right. The books of Josh Hawley the Cowardly Traitor or Don "Coke Boy" Trump, Jr. were bought in bulk in order to make them "bestselling authors". In a free market, their books would have sold as well as East German cars.