Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff reportedly pressured a library and colleges where she spoke to purchase copies of her book, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Summary
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff reportedly pressured a library and colleges where she spoke to purchase copies of her book, according to a report from the Associated Press.
- Her staff routinely hawked her memoir or her children’s books to public institutions that brought in the liberal justice to speak, resulting in thousands of book purchases since she joined the court in 2009.
- Sotomayor, who was appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama, has earned at least $3.7 million from her books in her time on the bench.
- “For an event with 1000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask [her children’s book] to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough. Families purchase multiples and people will be upset if they are unable to get in line because the book required is sold out,” a Sotomayor staffer wrote in August 2019 ahead of an event in Portland, Oregon.
- In addition to selling books, the Associated Press found justices from across the ideological spectrum – including Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Clarence Thomas – have been hosted by schools that used those events as “an inducement to prospective donors” to their institutions.
- The Daily Beast picked up a statement from the Supreme Court justifying the actions of her taxpayer-funded staff: “When (Sotomayor) is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.”
- NPR observed that while Sotomayor is not the only justice to earn outside income by writing books, “none of the justices has as forcefully leveraged publicly sponsored travel to boost book sales as has Sotomayor.”
- ABC News noted Michigan State purchased 11,000 copies of her book to distribute to first-year students (why MSU chose her book over, say, Clarence Thomas’ My Grandfather’s Son I will leave to the reader to decide) and Clemson was assured that not only would 60 copies be enough for Sotomayor to sign, “most institutions order in the ranges of 400 and up.”
- National Review’s Jeff Blehar offered a backhanded defense of Sotomayor. “She justifiably receives minimal charity from National Review as befits the quality of her jurisprudence, but in this situation she earns the benefit of the doubt. For none can seriously claim she does not come by her folly honestly; she is incorruptibly stupid.”
- The New York Post noted that Sotomayor is allowed to use her staff in a way that executive branch or legislative branch staffers cannot because the Supreme Court enforces its own rules -and her behavior is not against any current Supreme Court guidelines.
- The Wall Street Journal noted Sotomayor is also accused of not recusing herself from cases where her publisher, Penguin Random House, was involved in the case, although none of those cases would end up getting reviewed by the court.
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
