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.
Report Year | Organization | Title |
---|---|---|
2019 | iCivics | Governing director |
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 |
---|---|---|---|
Nov. 20, 2019 | Penguin Random House | $10,586.11 |
Royalties
Book royalties |
May 16, 2019 | Penguin Random House | $10,947.53 |
Royalties
Book royalties |
April 30, 2019 | Neighbors Club | $2,000.00 |
Honorarium
Donation in lieu of honorarium |
Feb. 8, 2019 | Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators | $2,000.00 |
Honorarium
Donation in lieu of honorarium |
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.
No spouse-income
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. 26 – 29, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Austin, TX |
Book Event
Participation at Texas Book Festival |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Oct. 25 – 26, 2019 | Penguin Random House | New Orleans, LA |
Speaking
Conversation with participants at American Association of Pediatrics Conference |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Oct. 18 – 20, 2019 | Yale University | New Haven, CT |
Ceremony, Meetings
Attended unveiling of portrait and met with dean and alumni and law school students |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Oct. 18 – 20, 2019 | Yale University | New Haven, CT |
Academic - Other, Ceremony
Attended unveiling of portrait; met with dean, alumni and law school students |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Sept. 13 – 17, 2019 | National Women’s Hall of Fame | Seneca Falls, NY |
Ceremony
Attendance at installation as a member |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Sept. 13 – 17, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Seneca Falls, NY |
Book Event, Speaking
Participation in book event including Women’s National Hall of Fame |
Transportation |
Sept. 13 – 17, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Seneca Falls, NY |
Book Event
Participation in book event including Women’s National Hall of Fame |
Transportation |
Sept. 12 – 13, 2019 | Tufts University | Boston, MA |
Speaking, Teaching
Participation in question and answer session with students |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Sept. 11 – 12, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Chicago, IL |
Book Event
Conversation with students sponsored by Women and Children First bookstore |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Sept. 4 – 9, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Cincinnati, OH; Los Angeles and Oakland, CA; Portland, OR and Albuquerque, NM |
Book Event
Participation in various book-related events |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Aug. 31 – Sept. 1, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Decatur, GA |
Book Event
Participation in Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
Aug. 14 – 17, 2019 | Mississippi Book Festival | Jackson, MS |
Book Event
Attended events at MS Book Festival and met with federal judges and law clerks |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
July 3 – 19, 2019 | New York University | Lisbon, Portugal |
Conference/Symposium
Participation in New York University law leadership conference |
Food, Lodging, Transportation |
June 17 – 18, 2019 | Manhattan District Attorney’s Office | New York, NY |
Speaking
Remarks at birthday celebration for Robert Morgenthau |
Food, Transportation |
June 8 – 9, 2019 | Penguin Random House | New York, NY |
Book Event
Participation in Bronx Book Festival |
Transportation |
May 30 – 31, 2019 | Penguin Random House | New York, NY |
Book Event
Participation in New York Book Expo |
Transportation |
May 16 – 19, 2019 | Manhattan College | New York, NY |
Commencement Speech
Commencement speech |
Food, Transportation |
Jan. 21 – 24, 2019 | Supreme Court Historical Society | San Juan and Humacao, PR |
Speaking
Participation in panel with female judges in Puerto Rico and Q&A with college students |
Food, Lodging |
Jan. 21 – 24, 2019 | Penguin Random House | San Juan and Humacao, PR |
Book Event, Speaking
Participation in book events |
Transportation |
Oct. 18, 2019 | Penguin Random House | Meriden, CT |
Speaking, Teaching
Conversation with students at Maloney High School |
Transportation |
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 |
---|---|---|
Grateful American Foundation |
Grateful American Book Prize
Donated to iCivics |
$13,000.00 |
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.
Creditor | Description | Value |
---|---|---|
JPMorgan Chase & Co. |
Mortgage
Rental property, New York, NY |
$250,001 – $500,000 |
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 2019. For information about Sonia Sotomayor’s 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 III - A - Items 1 and 2 - Donations of $2,000 were made by each organization on my behalf to a qualified charitable organization in lieu of an honorarium, pursuant to Section 1020.30(c) of the Judicial Conference Regulations.
Part III - A - Items 3 and 4 - Publisher's royalties for Turning Pages. Dates provided are dates of checks forwarded by literary agent in amounts net of agent's commissions. Penguin Random House, LLC has advised me that it disbursed a total of $6,923.99 to promote the sale of books of mine that it published, in additional to royalties it paid.
Part IV - Item 7 - In conjunction with my participation in the identified event, I extended my stay at my own expense for a private vacation in Portugal.
Part IV - Item 8 - In conjunction with my meeting with public school students, the McMullan Foundation purchased various copies of my books, which were distributed to the students.
Part V - Item - 1 - I was awarded the Grateful American Book Prize by the Grateful American Foundation on October 17, 2019. In lieu of accepting the prize, I directed that the prize be donated by the Foundation to a qualified charitable organization. Attached hereto is a copy of a letter from the foundation confirming that the proceeds had been distributed to the charitable organization.
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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