Stipulated: Clarence Thomas’s extensive conflicts involving his right-wing billionaire pals mandate his resignation or removal. The fact that his wife is a conservative activist does not. No, the flags that Samuel Alito’s wife likes flying over the couple’s domiciles are not a reason for him to recuse himself from anything. Somewhere between these two extremes, but closer to the flags than Thomas’ goody bag, is the new assault on Justice Roberts.
Christopher Armitage, a far Left scholar whose anti-GOP, anti-Trump positions are cloaked in respectability, came up with this one. He describes himself as “independent.” Strangely, his work “has been cited by the Brookings Institution and covered by NPR, PBS, Mother Jones, and The Nation.” Those are all infamous Leftist propaganda organs, with Mother Jones and The Nation on the extreme end of the spectrum.
Now he is getting cheered by those sources for a Medium post that asserts,
Ethics Alarms 
OK not being a lawyer here, and on a jetlag. I am trying to get my head around this post.
The headline of the article says “The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I’m Filing for His Disbarment Today.“
That is materially different than that the Chief Justice’s wife works for firm A that performs business services for another firm B for 20 million dollar. That 20 million dollar is business revenue for firm A, not household money for the Roberts family, and legally it does not create a conflict of interest according to the sources you quote. Do I understand the facts of the case correctly? And just to understand the legal aspects of the case, it would not count as a conflict of interest to the sources you quote if the Chief Justice’s wife worked for firm B as an independent contractor, am I correct?
If I am correct in all my assumptions this is simply another ploy to delegitimize SCOTUS, or try to get rid of conservative leaning justices. Rep J Olszewski (D-MD) from Maryland introduced the ROBE act to term limit SCOTUS justices, for the same nakedly political reason given the age of the conservative justices.
Indeed it is just another ploy to delegitimize SCOTUS. And any bill that aims at a Constitutional Amendment is unserious and mere grandstanding.
It’s starting to seem that she may need to be impeached for being inept. The gentleman’s agreement to not impeach Supreme Court justices is the only reason I can see for keeping her on the court. The fear of a tit for tat kind of thing.
I suspect as she is on the court longer, she will become more bold (especially with a Democrat as president) and eventually start calling her collegues racists, homophobes, etc.
Despite the vast number of billboards, I suspect the legal community is relatively small, and that if both spouses are in the legal profession (or an adjacent field), then the other spouse’s firm is inevitably good to appear before the other spouse as the presiding judge. It would be impossible otherwise.
Likewise, when every law firm has a near equal incentive to hire a judge’s spouse as a consultant on the free market (ie, no kickbacks) from among the small community of such consultants, the individual influence of each firm on the judge-spouse is so diluted as to be meaningless.
Of what concern to the judge is it that his his or her spouse referred an unrelated client to a firm before the court, and received a proportionate pay for services rendered? Especially if dozens of other firms paid for equivalent lawful services.
One aspect that slightly concerns me in Robert’s case is the purported misrepresentation of salary versus commission earned by the wife. Is there anything there? It seems rather trivial that a consultant is paid more when a refered client generates more revenue for a firm, rather than a flat rate. When dozens of other firms make an equivalent lawful deal, and the judge spouse accurately represents the total amount paid to everyone his or her spouse by each firm, where is the appearance of impropriety?
Salaries are a fixed amount while commissions are based on performance. There is fundamentally no difference in how they should be recorded. If the person receives compensation based on the financial performance of the firm then one say there is a financial interest in the overall performance of the firm.
Example: HR recruiter (a) gets a salary of 100k annually that is fixed based on any level of performance. That makes the recruiter an employee Independent recruiter (b) gets a base of 0 to any amount but gets a commission of (x)% of the new hire’s compensation the incentive is to find the most valuable person for the firm. The relationship between the court and the recruiter is non existent. One could argue that recruiter (a) being an employee of a law firm creates a conflict of interest but that should be a bar for the firm to bring cases to the SCOTUS not force a judge to recuse. The law firm created the conflict if there is one – which I think is tenuous at best- and not the Justice.
Independent recruiter (b) can recruit for any law firm and thus cannot create any conflict of interest. The argument offered would preclude any appearance of bias which could cause any Justice to be required to recuse. A spouse’s employment situation that is compensated is not the only way that an appearance of bias can arise. That is evident in the dissents recently offered by the progressive justices.
The document claims that commissions and salary are handled differently from a tax perspective. I’m no tax expert, but isn’t the only difference that there is an automatic withholding percentage (22%) applied to commissions/bonuses that isn’t automatically applied to salaries?