This Explains a Lot

One of the things that has always puzzled me a bit was why these billionaires are spending so much money on wining and dining, and paying conservative federal judges.

After, people don't become billionaires, or (as is the case with most of them) expand on the fortunes that they inherited, by paying for something that they already know.

Thomas, and Gorsuch, and Alito, and Scalia, and Roberts, and Kavanaugh are not going to suddenly become socialist on the bench.

Well, David Sirota and Andrew Perez have explained it for me, and for the rest of us.

History shows that over a long period of time, Federal Judges in general, and Supreme Court Justices in particular, when untethered from the professional consequences of their political opinions, it is a lifetime tenure, tend to slowly move in a more liberal direction.

So, all of this largess is not about the goodness of the billionaires hearts, it's about making sure that they STAY bought.

The judges know that if they stray too far off the reservation, the expensive vacations, the remunerative speaking gigs, the remarkably generous real estate deals, and the deals for their spouses and kids will end.

It locks the justices into place ideologically:

Amid all the revelations of corruption at the Supreme Court, one glib social-media defense of the conservative justices has been about ideology. As the (ridiculous) argument goes, these scandals aren’t actually scandals because the gifts and cash that flowed from right-wing billionaires and conservative activist Leonard Leo’s dark money network don’t actually influence the justices. Why? Because the justices were already conservative and were always going to vote the way they voted on cases of interest to their paymasters.

But that analysis misses how corruption works on a systemic level.

As the Founders noted, judges are given lifetime appointments for the explicit purpose of preserving an “independent spirit” that allows them to change their views without fear of consequences. And in fact, data suggests that in the past, many conservative justices have become more liberal as they age.

In light of that, the money and gifts flowing to conservative justices can be seen not merely as cheap influence-peddling schemes to secure specific rulings in individual cases. It can also be seen as a grand plan to deter the ideological freedom that lifetime appointments afford.

In short, the largesse from billionaires and Leo — who helped assemble the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority as President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser — creates personal financial incentives for justices to remain doctrinaire ideologues and resist any deviation from the conservative line, even if they might once in a while have an inkling to dissent.

………

In 2015, FiveThirtyEight parsed the data and quantified a big trend in its headline: “Supreme Court Justices Get More Liberal As They Get Older.”

As you can see in the chart documenting the trend over nearly a century, many Republican nominees given the political freedom of a lifetime appointment have become more liberal in their rulings as they age.

To try to break this trend, conservative operatives didn’t necessarily conjure more compelling jurisprudential arguments in service of their ideology. Instead, they built a corruption machine that creates personal financial incentives for Republican appointees to never deviate from whatever that machine wants in any given case. To make conservatives’ demands extremely clear, that machine files endless amicus briefs, or friend-of-the court filings, at the Supreme Court and throughout the federal judiciary.

The financial incentives are elucidated in the recent spate of scandals at the high court. Indeed, each member of the conservative Supreme Court majority — and all lower court judges aspiring to be the next GOP Supreme Court appointee — knows that if he or she toes the line, there may be big rewards, whether it’s luxury vacations, boarding school tuition and housing for family members, land deals, or lucrative payments to spouses. 

This explains a lot.

Clearly, we need more than an update or clarification to the judicial code of conduct. 

We need an absolute prohibition on judges accepting free travel, outside jobs, free lodging, or speaking fees.

As to the spouses.  I'm not entirely sure, but jailing Ginni Thomas would be a good start.