John Roberts (2007)

Chief justice since Sept. 29, 2005

← Back to overview View 2007 Disclosure PDF

Positions

Positions are those where a justice was an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee or consultant for any organization other than the U.S. government at the time the disclosure was filed.

No positions

Agreements

Agreements include any agreements into which a justice has entered, such as employment contracts, continuing payments from former employers and continuing participation in employee welfare or benefit plans maintained by a former employer.

Year	Organization	Terms
2007	St. Mary’s University	“I agreed to serve as the Distinguished Visiting Jurist at the School of Law at St. Mary’s University -- Institute on World Legal Problems, Innsbruck, Austria, from July 5 - 15, 2008, for a salary of $15,000.”

Noninvestment income

Noninvestment income includes compensation from jobs the justice has had, such as teaching roles; jobs at law firms before they were judges; pension benefits; and royalties for intellectual property, such as books and copyrights.

Date/Year	Organization Name	Amount	Purpose
July 5, 2007	The Pennsylvania State University	$15,000.00	Teaching Taught a course on How the Role and Operation of the Supreme Court Have Changed Over Time
Jan. 31, 2007	Northwestern University	$7,500.00	Teaching Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar; delivered Trienens Lecture; taught Constitutional Law class and joint Supreme Court Simulation/Supreme Court Clinic Seminar

Spousal income

Spousal income includes earned income from jobs a justice’s spouse has held, as well as honoraria. Justices are required to report a spouse’s income that exceeded $1,000 but are not required to disclose specific amounts.

Source	Description	Amount
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP	Salary
Major, Lindsey & Africa	Salary

Travel Reimbursements

Reimbursements include any payment or thing of value received to cover travel-related expenses for justices and their families. They can include expenses that the third party paid directly or for which a justice paid upfront and was reimbursed, but justices are not required to report reimbursements’ dollar values. Show more.

Date	Source	Location	Purpose	Items Paid or Provided
Oct. 22 – 24, 2007	Brigham Young University	Provo, UT	Speaking Delivered forum assembly address; remarks and Q&A with law school students	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
Sept. 12 – 15, 2007	University of Montana	Missoula, MT	Speaking, Teaching Delivered Judge William B. Jones and Judge Edward A. Tamm Judicial Lecture and taught law school classes	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
July 5 – 15, 2007	The Pennsylvania State University	Vienna, Austria	Teaching Taught course on how the role and operation of the Supreme Court have changed over time	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
May 24 – 25, 2007	College of the Holy Cross	Worcester, MA	Ceremony, Speaking Received honorary degree and delivered commencement address	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
May 2 – 6, 2007	Alaska Bar Association	Fairbanks, AK	Ceremony, Speaking Keynote speaker at Alaska Bar Association annual meeting, attended and spoke at naturalization ceremony, participated in continuing legal education panel	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
April 13 – 14, 2007	University of Richmond	Richmond and Jamestown, VA	Ceremony, Speaking Spoke at William Green Award ceremony; delivered remarks at unveiling of plaque commemorating 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown	Food, Lodging
Jan. 31 – Feb. 2, 2007	Northwestern University	Chicago, IL	Speaking, Teaching Served as the Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar, delivered Trienens Lecture, taught constitutional law class and joint Supreme Court simulation/clinic seminar	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
Sept. 19, 2007	Syracuse University	Syracuse, NY	Speaking, Teaching Participated in student seminar, delivered address at dedication of Newhouse III building	Air Transportation, Food
March 7, 2007	The University of Texas at Austin	Dallas, TX	Speaking Delivered third Tex Lezar Lecture	Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
Feb. 6, 2007	Washington University in St. Louis	St. Louis, MO	Moot Court, Teaching Taught Constitutional Law I (combined classes from Wash University School of Law and St. Louis University School of Law); judged the Wiley Rutledge Moot Court final round	Air Transportation, Food

Gifts

Gifts include gifts received by justices, their spouses or their dependent children from any source other than a relative. Justices are only required to disclose gifts whose aggregate value from the same source exceeds a certain threshold ($480 in 2023) within the reporting period and gifts that are individually worth more than 40% of that threshold. This only captures gifts that have been disclosed, which ProPublica reporting shows can be incomplete. Show more.

Source	Description	Value
Robert Trent Jones Golf Club	Honorary membership (annual dues) Not used in 2007	$12,600.00
The University Club of Washington, D.C.	Honorary membership (annual dues) Not used in 2007	$3,240.00

Liabilities

Liabilities include debts that exceeded $10,000 at any time during the reporting period for justices, their spouses or their dependent children. Because justices have to report these each year, some debts may show up multiple times in the table. Show more.

No liabilities

Investments

Investments include cash accounts, property, stocks, investment funds, retirement plans and other financial instruments owned by justices, their spouses and dependent children in excess of certain value thresholds or generating more than $200 in income in a year. Justices are not required to disclose information about their personal residences unless they generate rental income.

ProPublica has not extracted investments data for 2007. For information about John Roberts’ investments, view the filing.

Additional Information or Explanations

Additional information or explanations include a justice’s explanatory comments clarifying other portions of the report. These may include explanations of apparent inconsistencies with previous reports, third-party opinions on possible conflicts of interest or other supporting documentation.

No additional information or explanations

About The Data

The bulk of the data we used came from the Free Law Project, which maintains a database of more than 35,000 financial disclosure records for federal judges, justices and magistrates, most of it dating back to 2003. These disclosures, which federal employees are required to file each year under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, are maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The law, however, requires most of them to be destroyed after six years, making many disclosures from earlier years hard to find. Our disclosures cover most of those filed since 2003, as well as some financial information disclosed by some justices during their Senate confirmations in 1990, 1991 and 2000. (Do you have information about a Supreme Court justice’s finances from before 2003? Email us.)

Because much of the data was extracted from PDFs using optical character recognition, we designed our own database and imported and cleaned the Free Law Project’s data to fix scanning and other errors. We corrected spelling errors, edited fields for style and clarity and, where possible, attempted to add contextual information by, for example, categorizing organizations and transactions, standardizing certain fields, updating entity names or filling in missing information.

In some cases, such as when the Free Law Project did not have a specific disclosure or had not extracted data from a report, we extracted or transcribed the data manually.

After cleaning and standardizing the data, we spot-checked it for accuracy, looking primarily for transcription or categorization errors. If you believe you see an error in the database, please contact us at [email protected].

ProPublica has reported that justices have sometimes failed to disclose speaking engagements and gifts like private jet travel and luxury vacations from wealthy and influential people. Read our series: Friends of the Court.

Do you have any tips on the courts? Contact us securely or reach out to ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan.

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