Of Clerks and Perks

There are few jobs as powerful as that of Supreme Court justice—and few jobs as cushy. Many powerful people don’t have time for extracurricular traveling, speaking, and writing, let alone for three-month summer recesses. Yet the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist produced four popular books on legal themes while serving on the bench. Clarence Thomas has been working on a $1.5 million memoir. And Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired to general adulation, took twenty-eight paid trips in 2004 alone, and published books in 2002, 2003, and 2005.

All this freelancing time breeds high-handedness. Ruth Bader Ginsburg tars those who disagree with her enthusiasm for foreign law with the taint of apartheid and Dred Scott; Antonin Scalia calls believers in an evolving Constitution “idiots,” and carries on a public feud with a newspaper over whether a dismissive gesture he made after Sunday ...