For Supreme Court justices, book deals have become a highly lucrative way to shape the public narrative of their lives and legacies.
The money brought in by those deals, one of the few ways that they can supplement their income, often far eclipses their salaries, roughly $300,000.
A majority of the current justices have published books, most recently Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her memoir, “Lovely One,” which traces the arc of her family from the segregated Jim Crow South to her rise to the Supreme Court, was released this week and shot up Amazon’s best-seller list.
Here’s a closer look.
Which justices have written books?
Six of the nine justices have written books or currently have book deals.
Justice Jackson joins Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas in publishing moving accounts of their childhoods and paths to the court. Justice Sotomayor has also written several children’s books.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch has focused on the law, publishing books describing the ethical and legal issues raised by assisted suicide and euthanasia. His most recent, published this summer, is a series of stories drawn from court cases that he uses to argue that administrative overreach and the increasing number of laws have harmed ordinary Americans.
Two of the newest justices — Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — have book deals in place. Justice Barrett’s book has been described as her views about keeping personal feelings out of judicial rulings. Justice Kavanaugh’s is expected to be a legal memoir that is likely to touch on his bruising confirmation fight.
How much money have the justices received?
The short answer: It varies widely. Some justices have received multimillion-dollar book deals and reap royalties for years, while others see smaller advances and count their royalties in the hundreds of dollars.
Much of the available information is cobbled together from industry insiders aware of the deals and the justices’ required annual financial disclosures, which offer a delayed, sometimes incomplete, view.
One point is very clear: The money that justices receive from book deals often far surpasses their income from the court. The annual salary of an associate justices this year is $298,500, and that of the chief justice is $312,200.
When Justice Thomas received a $1.5 million advance for his 2007 memoir, the deal was reported to be the highest ever paid for a book by a sitting justice. Originally called “From Pin Point to Points After,” a reference to the tiny outpost where he was born in the coastal lowlands of Georgia, the memoir was pitched as an earnest Horatio Alger-like story.
A number of the justices have since landed multimillion-dollar book deals, including Justice Jackson, who received one in her first few months on the court. It was worth about $3 million, according to people familiar with the agreement. She reported receiving part of her advance — $893,750 in her latest financial disclosure.
Justice Barrett received a reported $2 million book deal shortly after joining the court, and her financial disclosures say she has been paid $425,000 so far.
Justice Kavanaugh has disclosed $340,000 from his publisher, according to his 2023 financial form. Justice Gorsuch, in his most recent disclosures, has reported several hundred thousand dollars from his various books, most recently a $250,000 payment from HarperCollins.
Over the last several years, Justice Sotomayor has reported receiving about $3.7 million total for her memoir and children’s books. She has come under scrutiny for using her administrative staff at the court to help organize book events, including urging organizers to buy more copies, according to The Associated Press, which cited public records.
Do these deals cause conflicts with the justices and their day jobs?
One of the thorniest questions about the book deals — and any financial ties for the justices — is about potential conflicts of interest.
Supreme Court justices make their own decisions about recusal, meaning they are not required to recuse themselves from cases. That longstanding practice was enshrined in the court’s ethics code, which the justices announced last fall after revelations that some of the justices — most notably Justice Thomas — had failed to disclose luxury gifts and travel from wealthy benefactors.
Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch had faced criticism for failing to recuse themselves from recent cases before the court that involved their publisher, Penguin Random House. Two cases related to issues of copyright infringement involved the company. In both instances, the court declined to take up either case on its docket.
Responding to the article about Justice Sotomayor’s book sales, the Supreme Court said in a statement that she had participated in the cases because of “an inadvertent omission” that had not brought Penguin’s involvement to her attention. The “chambers’ conflict check procedures have since been changed,” it added.
The statement also said that “Justice Sotomayor would have recused in cases in which Penguin Random House was a party, in light of her close and ongoing relationship with the publisher.”
Gabe Roth, who leads the ethics watchdog group Fix the Court, posted on social media this week about a long-running copyright dispute that could bring the issue to a head. The case involves the scanning and lending of print library books between the Internet Archive and a number of publishing companies, including several working with the justices.
Do a lot of people buy these books?
Again, there is a wide variation here.
Among the current justices, Justice Sotomayor appears to be the most successful in overall books sold. To date, her five books, which include several books for young readers, have collectively sold around 700,000 print copies, according to Circana BookScan, which tracks 85 percent of the print market.
Her most popular book is her 2013 memoir, “My Beloved World,” which sold more than 320,000 print copies and recounts her upbringing in an unstable home, her struggle with juvenile diabetes and her path from Princeton to the Supreme Court, where she became the first Hispanic judge and the third woman to serve on the court. Her 2019 children’s book, “Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You,” was also a hit, and has sold close to 270,000 print copies.
Justice Thomas also wrote a best-selling memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” which was published in 2007 and sold around 237,000 print copies. It chronicles some of the struggles and controversies he has withstood, including polarizing Senate hearings over sexual harassment allegations from his former aide Anita Hill.
Justice Gorsuch has produced several books about legal and constitutional theories, including “A Republic, if You Can Keep It,” which explores the role of judges in the constitutional system and his views on how the Constitution should be interpreted today; his 2006 book “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” which argues against legalizing euthanasia; and his recently published book, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.” Collectively, those books have sold around 64,000 print copies.
Although sales figures are not yet available for Justice Jackson’s memoir, the book has ranked high on Amazon’s best-seller list since its release.
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