The perks of being a federal judge just got fewer.
With most of the media’s attention fixed on the financial rescue package these last 10 days, few noticed Congress’ passage of a bill barring Supreme Court justices on down from accepting honorary club memberships worth more than $50.
At least five of the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have reported accepting such gifts, valued at thousands of dollars, on their 2006 financial disclosure forms, according to Tony Mauro of Legal Times.
Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts Jr. reported, for instance, that he had accepted an honorary membership at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, valued at $12,000, which he said he used just once for dining that year.
Roberts had also accepted the gift of a membership in the storied University Club of Washington, D.C. in 2006, as did Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, according to their disclosure forms.
That is of no small consequence to the 104-year-old club, which likes to boast about having presidents, congressional leaders and judges among its members as a selling point.
A history of the club, once headed by William Howard Taft, a former president and chief justice of the Supreme Court, is posted on its website, describing how the late House Speaker “Tip O’Neill preferred the old card room on the third floor and nothing pleased him more than relieving his House colleague, Richard Nixon, of his monies at the poker table. It was a social gathering place for Justices Warren and Black during the era of the Warren Court.”
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens listed four memberships on his 2006 disclosure form. Besides the Washington Golf and Country Club, which likes to describe itself as the “playground of presidents,” he had accepted memberships in the Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, the Union League Club of Chicago and the Ulen Golf and Country Club in Lebanon, IN.
The ban on such memberships was an amendment offered by Republican Sen. John Kyl of Arizona to a routine bill extending the authority of the Supreme Court police to protect justices beyond the grounds of the Court, and is now awaiting the president’s signature.
In earlier debates over such legislation, Kyl said the acceptance of the free memberships gave the appearance of impropriety. The $50 gift ban on honorary memberships already applies to U.S. senators.
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