What Supreme Court justices do during their summer vacation

By S.M. | NEW YORK

LONG before before he was handed the gavel to shepherd America’s Supreme Court, John Roberts pooh-poohed a proposal by Chief Justice Warren Burger to establish a new federal appellate court. An “intercircuit court” to ease the Supreme Court’s burden was a “terrible idea”, Mr Roberts wrote in 1983, despite “tales of woe” from purportedly overworked justices. These complaints “are enough to bring tears to the eyes”, he jeered. “[O]nly Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off”. Indeed, other federal judges work throughout year, and nobody else in the federal government enjoys an annual quarter-year sabbatical. How do the justices spend their three months of summer break?

The Supreme Court website insists that “the work of the justices is unceasing”. All summer long, “they continue to analyse new petitions for review, consider motions and applications, and must make preparations for cases scheduled for fall argument”. What the website leaves out are the justices’ busy travel schedules in July, August and September. Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a watchdog, points out that, in contrast to other branches of the federal government, the Supreme Court gives no “notice of the justices' out-of-Washington appearances”. It falls on gumshoes like Victoria Kwan of SCOTUS Map, which keeps track of their movements, to piece together the meandering jurists' schedules. This month, Justice Anthony Kennedy is in Austria teaching a summer school course for the McGeorge School of Law. Chief Justice Roberts will teach a course on the historical development of America’s Supreme Court in New Zealand. Justice Stephen Breyer will make an appearance in Connecticut in September, while his seatmate, Justice Clarence Thomas, will speak at a community college in Texas. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 84-year-old leader of the court’s liberal wing, has a particularly busy summer in store. She is teaching international students for five days in Malta this week, will give a keynote speech to a lawyers’ organisation in Washington, DC and speak to the Utah State Bar—and that’s just July. Over the rest of her summer, Justice Ginsburg will discuss the legacy of Justice Antonin Scalia—her late friend and jurisprudential enemy—at the Aspen Institute in Colorado; speak about one of her great extra-judicial loves—opera—in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and give a talk in Chicago.

Summer affords the justices opportunities to supplement their $251,800 salary. Justice Kennedy earned $12,500 for his course in Austria two summers ago, though his most recent financial disclosure shows no teaching income in 2016. Last year, Justice Samuel Alito took in $17,255 for teaching a summer course at Tulane University’s law school. (He also found time to teach as an adjunct law professor at St. John’s and Duke during the term, collecting $5,000 for each stint.) Summer is a good time to catch up on writing, too. Four justices have published books in recent years—Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have penned memoirs, while Stephen Breyer has written on his jurisprudential style and how globalisation affects the Supreme Court. These books have yielded significant income, including payouts in the seven figures for Justices Sotomayor and Thomas and six-figure royalties for Justice Breyer.

But all good things must come to an end. As the Washington, DC heat recedes and September draws to a close, the justices return from far-flung locales to face a daunting pile of paper. With several thousand petitions lurking in their inboxes, the justices and their newly installed clerks must decide which cases to accept onto their docket. At an aptly named “long conference”, the justices march through hundreds of petitions, rejecting about 99% of them but granting a select few. And on the first Monday of October, the justices hear their first cases of the term. They will sit for two-week argument sessions (with hearings scheduled three days a week) once a month until April to work through 60-70 cases. Then they have two months to finish drafting the opinions and wrap things up by the end of June. In John Roberts’ words years ago, the summer recess isn’t just about giving the justices a break from resolving the republic’s most pressing legal controversies—the adjournment reassures Americans that the “constitution is safe for the summer”.

Correction (July 4th): A previous version of this explainer said that books by supreme court justices returned “nine-figure” payouts. Alas, books on jurisprudence do not sell as many copies as the Harry Potter series. Justices do however receive millions of dollars. This has been amended. Apologies.