Last week, all the rage was the book scandal that had been tied to Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor.
Her aides, for years, have been pressuring institutions to buy copies of her book in conjunction with personal appearance, according to the AP report.
This “scandal” has suddenly disappeared, but it is something we definitely need to take a closer look at, reported New Republic.
This is a Problem
One of the reasons that the issue has just disappeared was because Sotomayor was not actually benefiting from the sale of her book, but there is a good reason for that.
Sotomayor was paid more than $3 million for the rights to her rags-to-riches tale, but nobody bought the book when it came out, so the publisher was on the hook for the massive upfront payment it made to Sotomayor.
If she ever wanted to get another fat payday like that again, Sotomayor knew she needed to help the publisher get their money back, and this was how she was going to do this.
This was compared to Justices Alito and Thomas not reporting trips they took with wealthy “friends,” but again, this was nothing new and according to ethics policy, they did nothing wrong.
This is because the trips were with friends, not random gifts, and yes, I realize it is still shady and on the record as saying they both should have reported the trips, but these trips were no different from trips that had been taken by the likes of RBG and Justice Breyer.
If they want to add something to the ethics code, how about banning book writing for any public office holder because this is where they really cash in.
I have written about this numerous times regarding members of Congress, but the Supreme Court is no different.
For instance, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was given an advance of $2 million for a book after being appointed, a book that has still not hit the shelves. Justice Gorsuch has made almost $1 million from his books sales since taking the bench.
This life is supposed to be about public service, but the bench and Congress are now about getting rich, and nothing else.
They sure as hell do not serve the people that elect them, and why would they when there is so much money on the table from book companies, lobbyists, and megadonors.
Our Founders are rolling over in their graves seeing the utter disgrace our government has become when they literally shed blood to create what was supposed to be the model for all democracies.
