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The Pennsylvania State University

College/University

8 Mentions

3 Reimbursements

$60K Income Paid

The Pennsylvania State University has been linked to two current Supreme Court justices via their disclosure forms. These ties could include direct financial relationships — such as employment, travel reimbursements or gifts — as well as other connections, such as degrees awarded.

John Roberts
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
Samuel Alito
  • John Roberts $30K income • 4 mentions

    $30K income • 4 mentions

    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.

    Report Year Amount Purpose
    2011 $15,000.00 Academic - Other
    2007 $15,000.00 Teaching

    Taught a course on How the Role and Operation of the Supreme Court Have Changed Over Time

    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.

    Date Location Purpose Items Paid or Provided
    July 9 – 21, 2011 Florence, Italy Teaching

    Taught eight-day course on “The U.S. Supreme Court — Historical Perspective”

    Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
    July 5 – 15, 2007 Vienna, Austria Teaching

    Taught course on how the role and operation of the Supreme Court have changed over time

    Air Transportation, Food, Lodging
  • Samuel Alito $30K income • 3 mentions

    $30K income • 3 mentions

    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.

    Report Year Amount Purpose
    2012 $15,000.00 Teaching
    2010 $15,000.00 Teaching

    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.

    Date Location Purpose Items Paid or Provided
    July 8 – 20, 2012 Florence, Italy Teaching Food, Lodging, Transportation

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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