2 Justices Of The Supreme Court Abstained From Self-Rescue In Book Publisher Cases

Supreme Court

Two justices of the Supreme Court did not attempt to rescue themselves and avoid cases involving them that were presented to the court. The cases took place during the previous decade and involved a book publishing company that paid the Supreme Court justices via expensive book deals.

An Interesting Attitude From The Supreme Court

The two different cases involved copyright infringement concerning Penguin Random House, the conglomerate in publishing. The appeals were refused by the High Court in 2013. They refused to even hear the 1st case. They turned away the 2nd case twice in 2019 and 2020. In each case, the lower courts awarded the publisher with the victory with the decisions standing till now.

Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal justice, who entered the Supreme Court in 2009, has received several million dollars from Penguin over quite a few years. She declined a self-rescue attempt in every one of the 3 cases. Neil Gorsuch, a conservative justice, joined the Supreme Court in 2017. He had also been paid several hundred thousand dollars via book deals by Penguin. Gorsuch kept his qualification from the most recent case when it was presented to test out the court’s consideration on the matter.

The actions of the two SC justices were reported earlier by a group of watchdogs, Fix The Court. This group promotes transparency in the judiciary. Over the past few weeks, the US Supreme Court has been facing intense scrutiny after several reports regarding a few of the justice’s ethical lapses surfaced. The topic was that the justices were not transparent enough regarding financial disclosures.

Groups of watchdogs have been particularly concerned with the recusal practices of the group, which is an area that, according to them, is an area that has a lot of room for reform. The Supreme Court is yet to comment on the matter.