Supreme Court Justices Make Side Money

[Rose Siding]

snip>
The annual disclosures on Friday painted a picture of a well-heeled group on the nation's highest court, with at least six of the nine justices holding more than $1 million in assets: O'Connor, Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens.
...
None of the justices reported receiving gifts, although three of them -- Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy -- received more than $20,000 in side money for limited teaching duty at law schools. Two others, O'Connor and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, picked up thousands more in book royalties.

O'Connor, an advocate of consulting international law for Supreme Court decisions, topped the group in travel to attend lectures, meet with students or receive awards.
...
Scalia, a fierce critic of relying on international law for U.S. cases, was the second most well-traveled, logging 15 trips last year. Many were to foreign locales -- including Kyoto, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand and Greece -- as part of law school seminars.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-scotus-justices-finances,0,3080762.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[bullimiami]

1. international law is not necessarily us law. unless we have signed

a treaty, like with the geneva conventions, once the treaty is ratified it is us law as well.

bushco has broken us and international law when he flaunted the geneva conventions.

[Rose Siding]

3. I believe this refers to the use of int'l law as precedent in arguments

This was used in the majority decision about banning the death penalty for minors and other cases also.

The extreme cons on the bench don't want to pay any attn to how legal systems are evolving on a world wide scale, preferring the standard of American Exceptionalism.

They completely overlook the fact that our entire legal system is a result of long standing *non* American precedent.

[Demit]

2. Doesn't bother me. They teach, they write. They shouldn't be paid for it?

[BagEnd]

4. More than one of them (most?) would make more if they retired.

I doubt even the right-wingers are in it for the profit.

Now... "power"... that's a horse of an entirely different color.

[Iowa]

5. What surprised me was this quote...

"Rehnquist, meanwhile, reported assets of about $780,000 to $1.2 million. Thomas cited holdings of $150,000 to $410,000, and Kennedy disclosed assets of about $110,000 to $230,000."

I find it hard to believe that these guys don't have a great deal more given their ages and positions. I see they're allowed to exclude "some other accounts" -- that must be where the corporate payoffs go.