In the news:

…In two separate copyright infringement cases concerning the publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House, the high court declined to take up the appeals, with the court saying in 2013 that it wouldn’t hear the first case, and the second case being turned away from the court in 2019 and again in 2020. In both cases, the publisher won at the lower court level, and those decisions stood.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court in 2009 and has been paid millions of dollars from the publisher over the years, declined to recuse herself in all three instances.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the court in 2017 and also has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in book deals with the publisher, declined to disqualify himself from the more recent case when it came before the court for consideration…

…the federal law concerning recusal has long been interpreted as applying to stock ownership on the part of the justice or a close family member…

…Breyer, who retired in 2022, likely recused himself from the cases because he owns stock in a company that for a time had a large stake in Penguin…

Roth, whose group has for years kept track of instances in which justices should have recused themselves from a case, said he could not point to other examples where a justice should have disqualified him or herself from a case concerning their book publisher.

Roth noted that Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson also have books in the works….

Too easy.

As always, we don’t allow ignorant comments out of moderation to be linked with the original post, but we will present some of them in subsequent posts for the purpose of public derision and mockery. As we see fit.

We see fit.

We’ve been getting more attempted trolling comments submitted in response to Eric Schmitt (r) has serious concerns about the financial dealings of Clarence Thom…oh, wait (May 5, 2023):

And surprise, surprise now we see Sotomeyer has received millions from Random House and refused to recuse herself in their cases! I say so what these Justices haven’t changed the way they would vote on any of these cases! Now if she suddenly voted conservative I would be like wow!

You left out Neil Gorsuch (r). How convenient.

Book contracts and royalties, reported on disclosure forms, or unreported vacations, travel, school tuition, to name just a few, provided by a billionaire. If you’ve got a concern with the former, you should definitely have a serious problem with the latter.

“…Now if she suddenly voted conservative I would be like wow!” As opposed to making a decision based on the law and the merits of the case.

Too easy.

Previously:

Fishing or orchestral? (May 7, 2023)