Embarrassing and hyper-partisan as it was, Senator Whitehouse’s rant on the Senate floor last week was not entirely without its valid points. He is right that the U.S. Supreme Court has been having too many ethics breakdowns (the leaking of Justice Alito’s draft of the Dobbs opinion was one of them) and as I noted in the EA piece, (AGAIN) there is no defending Clarence Thomas. He is not, however, the only Justice with some ‘splainin’ to do, as Ricky so often said to Lucy.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson published a memoir shortly after being placed on the Supreme Court as a DEI coup, though she hadn’t really done anything to justify such an ego trip. “Lovely One” is now going for half-price on Amazon, but Jackson received a $893,750 advance for the book reported $2 million in profits last year. Since there is no indication that the memoir is flying off the shelves, the numbers are puzzling. Penguin Random House will soon be publishing Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book and it paid her a $2 million advance. Why? The majority of the country can’t name a single Supreme Court justice, but the ones who are willing to cash in are receiving celebrity level book advances. [Full disclosure: the book I co-authored with Ed Larson was also published by Random House, in 2007. We received approximately $6.78 each as our advance…okay, a bit more than that.]

Once upon a time, Justices didn’t publish memoirs until they retired, if then, and any other books were legal in nature. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was paid over $3 million for her literary output, which include a memoir, “My Beloved World” (Ick!) and children’s books called “Just Help!: How to Build a Better World”, “Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You'” and soon to be hot off the presses, “Just Shine!: How to Be a Better You.”

Interestingly…okay, come on in, Arte…

…all of these book deals are coming from a German company, Bertelsmann, which has been quietly buying up most of the U.S. publishing industry. It currently owns Penguin, Random House, Doubleday, Ballantine, Knopf, Viking, Putnam, Bantam, Del Rey, Golden Books and many others. Five Justices including Jackson and Barrett recused themselves from a case involving allegations of plagiarism by black racist hustler Ta-Nehisi Coates because his books have been published by Penguin. (Coates won the case.)

There is no law against Supreme Court Justices cashing in, nor do I think an ethics rule would be effective or enforceable. It would be nice if the Justices simply understood that such book deals look shady (and may be shady), undermine trust in the Court, and raise the appearance of impropriety. After all, these people are supposed to be ethics role models.

Nah. After all, it’s money….