The Supreme Court concluded its term on June 30 in the usual fashion: with long-awaited rulings on controversial topics. It’s nine members then vanished and will remain out of sight until the next term begins on the first Monday of October. 

Not every public servant gets a 92-day vacation, but few public servants work as hard as the six-person conservative supermajority did by overturning so many long-standing precedents The rights denied included those concerning reproductive freedom, free-speech, access to education for minorities, debt relief, and equal treatment for LGBTQ individuals. Clearly the Justices responsible for these injustices lied during their confirmation hearings when they vowed to respect precedents.

One might ask how such dubious characters came to be appointed to the highest court in the land, but the answer has been in plain sight for decades. The Federalist Society presided over by Leonard Leo and funded by conservative millionaires was designed to recruit law students and lawyers and indoctrinate them in the extreme cult of originalism and textualism that seeks to freeze constitutional law in the past. One can’t help recalling the Chad Mitchell Trio song about Goldwater’s run for president.”We’re the nice young men who want to to go back to 1910, we’re Barry’s Boys.”

Republican presidents have outsourced their choice of court nominees to Leo’s Federalist cabal because it provides pre-vetted, reliably far right nominees. Leo is also a Catholic, as are all six of the conservative Justices now on the court. It can be argued that a faith based on conforming to an unchanging doctrine is also good training for those asked to treat the law the same, like a bug frozen in amber.

The latest term also revealed further evidence of corruption by at least two of the justices, Thomas and Alito. They accepted “gifts” from conservative millionaires with vested interests in cases before the court. They received free rides on private jets and yachts, and stays at deluxe resorts all of which they failed to report as required by law and which may also be regarded as tax evasion.

Can the Justices argue they couldn’t afford to take such trips without accepting bribes from interested parties? Not really. The salary for the Justices is $285,000 a year which they can supplement with up to $30,000 more in side hustles such as teaching, speeches, and royalties for books they publish. That makes them richer than 90% of the American people whose rights they get to meddle with.

Several of the Justices could do without the government paycheck entirely. Chief Justice Roberts lives in a home worth $2,200,000 and is estimated to have a net worth between $9 and $27 million dollars. Gorsuch is worth $40 million according to Forbes, Clarence Thomas by one estimate is worth $32 million, Alito has claimed a net worth between $2.9 and $7.4 million. 

Kavanaugh once claimed assets on a disclosure form of between $15,000 and $65,000 though he lives in a home worth $1.7 million. And Amy Comey Barrett is thought to have a net worth of $20 million, though she claimed a worth of $1million in 2011 and $6.2 million in 2012. Has their wealth increased exponentially since becoming Supremes or have they under-reported their assets? 

Either way, since their job is to provide justice not to sell it to the highest bidder, they could hardly complain if the Department of Justice or the Internal Revenue Service took a good long look at their finances. Shouldn’t the Supremes, like Caesar’s wife, be above suspicion? It’s only just.