Largely lost in all the other crises afflicting our country is the emerging revelation trend in which the truth about the state of the American Supreme Court is coming to light. And what it reveals is starling corruption and a sense that they feel they live about the law. The other thing in all this that stands out for me is the fact that all of the Justices tainted are ideological far right-wingers. You don’t see any of the progressive justices embroiled in any of this. I think that is significant and telling us something important. We need to restructure the Court, limit justice terms, and enforce the same ethical standards the rest of the judiciary must live up to. To give you a sense of the dimensions of this problem I am dedicating today’s issue of SR to this one trend. If after reading it you see my point I ask you to call 0r write your Senators and tell them you want to see them make these changes
It is astonishing how cavalier Chief Justice John Roberts is. One of the things coming out of this trend is the revelation that the Justices essentially see themselves as above the law operating under their own standards that suit their personal interests. No one else in government thinks that, or would say things like this.
Credit: Christopher Lee / The New York Times
Although the three branches of the American government were designed to be coequal, the structure of the Constitution tells us something about the relative power of each branch, as envisioned by the framers.
Article I establishes the legislature. Article II establishes the executive branch. And Article III establishes the federal judiciary. It is true that the branches share powers and responsibilities. But it’s also true that the framers trusted Congress — the representative branch — with far more authority than it did the president or the Supreme Court.
Congress makes laws. Congress spends money. Congress approves the president’s cabinet and says whether he can appoint a judge or not. Congress structures the judiciary and Congress sets the size of the Supreme Court and the scope of its business.
The upshot of all of this is that when Congress calls, the other branches are supposed to answer — not as a courtesy, but as an affirmation of the rules of the American constitutional order. The modern Congress might be weak, and the […]
If you or I worked for a corporation or for some branch of the government and did this sort of thing, we would be fired in an instant, and justifiably so. Chief Justice Roberts’ wife gets $10 million in legal commissions paid by people involved with cases before the Justice. Your wife makes $10 million but, of course, that makes no difference to you. It has no influence on your decisions. Right? Get real.
Chief Justice John Roberts Credit: Brendan Smialowski/ AFP
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife earned $10.3 million in commissions for her work for elite law firms, one of which argued a case before her husband, Business Insider reports.
Jane Sullivan Roberts stepped away from her career as a prominent lawyer two years after her husband’s confirmation to the Supreme Court to become a legal recruiter, matching job-seeking lawyers with employers in what turned out to be a lucrative career change.
She made $10.3 million in commissions from 2007 to 2014, according to a whistleblower complaint, which cites internal records that were obtained from her employer by a disgruntled former colleague of Jane Roberts.
Kendal B. Price, the whistleblower who worked with Roberts at the firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, said as the chief justice’s wife, income Jane Roberts earns from law firms who try cases before the court should be subject to scrutiny.
“When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it […]
Yet another example of how the Justices of the American Supreme Court live and work in their own world, which has no accepted sense of ethics
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch Credit: Erin Schaff / Getty
A nearly $2 million sale of property co-owned by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to a prominent law firm executive in 2017 is raising new questions about the lax ethics reporting requirements for Supreme Court justices.
Property records from Grand County, Colorado, show that the Walden Group LLC – a limited-liability company in which Gorsuch was a partner – sold a 40-acre property on the Colorado River to Brian Duffy, chief executive officer of the prominent law firm Greenberg Traurig.
Duffy and his wife, Kari Duffy, paid $1.8 million for the property on May 12, 2017 – just one month after Gorsuch was sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
The financial disclosure report filed by Gorsuch for the calendar year 2017 lists a sale by the Walden Group LLC for a profit of between $250,000 and $500,000. However, the section where a buyer could be listed is blank. It’s unclear if […]
Lauren Steussy, - Reader Supported News / Business Insider
Stephan:
And here is the latest on Clarence Thomas. His corruption without any consequences, with stories breaking week after week, should offend every American. And as the polls are showing it has. Look at the dramatic drop in respect and sense of the court’s fairness. All this needs to be seen in the context of the Dobb’s decision
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Credit: Robert Franklin / AP
Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t recuse himself from a 2004 appeals case, even though the company being sued was part of the real estate empire run by Harlan Crow, the GOP mega-donor who has showered Thomas with lavish trips starting in 1997 and more recently bought Thomas’ childhood home, according to Bloomberg.
Thomas previously told Bloomberg that it was OK for him to accept gifts from Harlan Crow because the GOP mega-donor did not have “business before the court.”
But the 2004 appeal ties the Crow family name to a case that did come before the Supreme Court: In January 2005, the court denied the appeal petition, a $25 million copyright claim brought by an architecture firm against Trammell Crow Residential Co., a development company that’s part of the real estate empire built by Crow’s father. The Supreme Court’s decision ultimately benefitted Trammell Crow Residential.
