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John Roberts (2008)

Chief justice since Sept. 29, 2005

← Back to overview View 2008 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.

No agreements

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 7, 2008 St. Mary’s University $15,000.00 Teaching

Taught course on the Supreme Court

April 30, 2008 University of Kansas $10,000.00 Teaching/Speaking, Moot Court

Judged moot court finals, delivered Vickers Memorial Lecture, taught school of business class and constitutional law class

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
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.

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Date Source Location Purpose Items Paid or Provided
Oct. 1 – 3, 2008 Drake University Des Moines, IA Meetings, Speaking

Delivered the Opperman Lecture, met with U.S district judges

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
Sept. 11 – 13, 2008 University of Notre Dame South Bend, IN Speaking, Teaching

“Conversation with the Chief Justice” presentation to the law school community; visited administrative law class for discussions with students

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
Sept. 4 – 7, 2008 University of Florida Gainesville, FL Moot Court, Teaching

Judged moot court finals, visited two classes at school of law for discussions with students

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
July 7 – 14, 2008 St. Mary’s University Innsbruck, Austria Teaching

Taught course on the Supreme Court

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
April 30 – May 2, 2008 University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Moot Court, Speaking, Teaching

Judged moot court finals; delivered Vickers Memorial Lecture; taught school of business class and constitutional law class

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
April 17, 2008 Columbia University New York, NY Moot Court

Judged moot court finals

Air Transportation
Jan. 2 – 4, 2008 Pepperdine University Malibu, CA Moot Court

Judged the Vincent Dalsimer Moot Court finals

Air Transportation, Food, Lodging

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)

Membership not used in any way

$12,600.00
The University Club of Washington, D.C. Honorary membership (annual dues)

Membership not used in any way

$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 2008. 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.

Part V, Line 1. Membership accepted prior to October 13, 2008. Resigned December 30, 2008.

Part V, Line 2. Membership accepted prior to October 13, 2008. Resigned December 30, 2008.

Part VII, Line 6. Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. was spun off from Hillenbrand on March 31, 2008.

Part VII, Line 8: Income and value of AlcatelLucent (Common) are now below the qualifying requirements and thus are not reported.

Part VII, Line 15. SIRIUS Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio merged on July 29, 2008.

Part VII, Line 55. Utah Educational Savings Plan (formerly lines 58 through 62) information is now reflected on Line 55 in accordance with the “no control” instructions for 2008.

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].

More from Friends of the Court

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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