Sonia Sotomayor’s Book Is for Sale, Not Her Vote

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

 

The Supreme Court is in the news again today, and for once it’s neither about Clarence Thomas’s fishing trips nor about John Roberts taking off and nuking affirmative action from orbit (it was the only way to be sure). Did you know that Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has written books, and that they suck?

 

That’s not the news! (Many recent Supreme Court justices have written books while on the bench — Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Thomas, Scalia — and you can guess the relative quality of those works based on the authors.) The news, according to the Associated Press, is this:

 

Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009. Details of those events, largely out of public view, were obtained by The Associated Press through more than 100 open records requests to public institutions. The resulting tens of thousands of pages of documents offer a rare look at Sotomayor and her fellow justices beyond their official duties.

 

In her case, the documents reveal repeated examples of taxpayer-funded court staff performing tasks for the justice’s book ventures, which workers in other branches of government are barred from doing. But when it comes to promoting her literary career, Sotomayor is free to do what other government officials cannot because the Supreme Court does not have a formal code of conduct, leaving the nine justices to largely write and enforce their own rules.

 

The real news to me here is that Sonia Sotomayor has finally accepted her proper intellectual calling as the author of children’s books, like tepid groundwater finding its true level. The rest, however, is not really news at all, not by the lights of anyone familiar with the stupidly comedic folkways of the celebrity-author publishing industry. Politicians selling their irrelevant tomes via “inauthentic” methods? This is a tradition as old as attempting to juke the New York Times bestseller list. Hillary Clinton’s vacuous post-2016 memoir What Happened was essentially marketed at gunpoint to anyone who sought her presence for a speech (on top of her fees), and politicians (and particularly aspirant hopefuls) have been buying their own works or pressuring others to do so for decades now. It’s pathetic in the utmost, but also standard operating practice for the sub-niche industry of political publishing.

 

To the extent it is a “scandal” — and it is extremely difficult to resist the opportunity to rake Sotomayor over the coals — the scandal is what’s legal. She’s out to leverage her importance to make a few extra bucks for herself, let there be no doubt about it. And therein lies the rub, because before you too hastily grab a pitchfork about it, realize: That is the entire point of this piece, which explicitly frames itself (as seen in the excerpt) to make the argument that the Supreme Court needs politically enforced “ethics reforms” to prevent Sonia Sotomayor’s Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You from spreading to children’s libraries.

 

Why? This is legal. Maybe it’s grubby, but so is the entire publishing industry. Does anyone think Sonia Sotomayor’s vote is up for sale to the highest bidder? (She has pre-recused herself from all legal issues involving her publisher Penguin-Random House that might come before the Court.) Sonia Sotomayor is the Supreme Court justice notoriously least likely to deviate from her extremely predictable left-wing political votes and dissents, a justice most notable as the one whose chambers currently rank a hard No. 1 in most parlor-room speculation as to the origins of the Dobbs leak. She justifiably receives minimal charity from National Review as befits the quality of her jurisprudence, but in this situation she earns the benefit of the doubt. For none can seriously claim she does not come by her folly honestly; she is incorruptibly stupid.

 

Finally, understand the endgame here. The target of these stories is not really Sotomayor — who is not going anywhere — it is the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself. The overarching goal of a very smart and ideologically motivated wing of the activist Left is to discredit the moral force of the Supreme Court over the long term, as a prelude to either expanding it or some more radical legislative solution. Don’t do these people’s work for them by biting on this hook, merely because this time it happens to be baited with the opportunity to attack someone conservatives disdain.

 

There have been countless stories about purported “ethical issues” relating to the Supreme Court since the Dobbs decision, and particularly in the lead-up to this year’s end of term. This is yet another one. All seek to seduce readers into a grotesque premise, which is that the Court is not merely politicized (voters are okay with this) but actually venally corrupt. It is a lie. There has never been even a shred of evidence to support it. If the ghost of Abe Fortas ever returns to haunt the chambers of the Supreme Court, you can be sure that National Review will raise the alarm. Until then, beware of these sorts of attempts to get you to participate in the delegitimization of an institution that actually stands as a bulwark against constitutional madness.