"Took" is a weird word here. This isn't a gift. It's a book advance; it's payment for a service. The book was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and sold well over 100,000 copies. Their profits surely covered their advance, which is how these deals work.
So it's not a matter of "taking money" in the way that Thomas is accused of taking gifts. This was all above board, reported, widely discussed, and of no interest until right this instant. That's just the web site being deliberately misleading.
It may be the case that a Supreme Court justice should recuse themselves in a case where they have a business relationship. At the level of a Supreme Court justice, it may not be feasible, since they decide national-scale decisions that they all have connections to. I do not know what the standard practice is.
But the OP's link is deliberately trying to pretend that this is identical to what Thomas is accused of, and that's a lie.
Is the comment directed at me, or to the author of the article?
I believe the SCOTUS justices are unique because they answer to no disciplinary authority. They are expected to behave ethically, but they encounter no consequences (besides public protest) when they do not. There has been much coverage of late about Justice Thomas's relationship with Harlan Crow, but virtually no coverage of even more egregious behavior by other SCOTUS justices (past and present).
My reason for posting this was not to disparage any of the justices, but to point out the media bias here.
Sorry. I just realized my comment might be misunderstood. It's neither addressed to you or the author of the article. It's really a question directed to US political system.
I meant to say, from so many Judges in the US, it seems many that end up in SCOTUS are of subpar quality.
> I believe the SCOTUS justices are unique because they answer to no disciplinary authority.
Congress is an actual thing that exists, so no.
They may answer to a disciplinary authority that is systematically dysfunctional in regard to its oversight responsibilities in a way which grants them effectively unlimited license, but it is not accurate that they answer to no disciplinary authority.
> There has been much coverage of late about Justice Thomas’s relationship with Harlan Crow, but virtually no coverage of even more egregious behavior by other SCOTUS justices (past and present).
While the coverage of Justice Thomas’s flagrantly corrupt relationship with Crowe has occasioned additional attention to dubious actions by other Supreme Court justices (notably, both Gorsuch and Sotomayor of current justices, the latter frequently deployed as whataboutism by conservatives to criticism of Thomas), none of them by current justices has been clearly “even more egregious” than Thomas – both Gorsuch and Sotomayor disclosed their payments, all three did not recuse themselves from cases where they had the financial relationship with the party [Thomas and Sotomayor] or counsel [Gorsuch], Gorsuch involved the most cases, Thomas involved the most value given to the Justice, much of it with not even a plausible case of exchange for value (outside of corruption), and without disclosure, and from a donor who in addition to having direct business before the Court is a partisan/ideological activist on a wide array of the most significant issues that have been before the Court.
So it's not a matter of "taking money" in the way that Thomas is accused of taking gifts. This was all above board, reported, widely discussed, and of no interest until right this instant. That's just the web site being deliberately misleading.
It may be the case that a Supreme Court justice should recuse themselves in a case where they have a business relationship. At the level of a Supreme Court justice, it may not be feasible, since they decide national-scale decisions that they all have connections to. I do not know what the standard practice is.
But the OP's link is deliberately trying to pretend that this is identical to what Thomas is accused of, and that's a lie.