Sandra Day O’Connor may have retired from the U.S. Supreme Court, but she has not given up judging.

She was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by the late Ronald Reagan, a president who decried “judicial activism.”

Natalie Bancroft, meet Viet Dinh.

Proving it can cover its own corporate owners with energy, the Wall Street Journal yesterday gave a full account of the latest bumbling and stumbling of the Bancroft family.

Earlier this year, the family, after great indecision and internal debate, agreed to sell Dow Jones & Co., which owned the Journal, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

While Supreme Court law clerks can now count on big signing bonuses after their year with the court, they can also count on good and powerful jobs in the government.

And as they rise to power in these jobs, they most likely find themselves working along side other former court law courts, fellow members of an elite club.

Connections count, and the Supreme Court connection counts a lot.

As baseball managers know, life isn’t always fair.

You put the team together, you make the key decisions, and the people who work for you make the big bucks.
The analogy isn’t exact, but something like that is happening at the U.S. Supreme Court, which opened its 2007-08 term on Monday.

The nine justices make the decisions. And for this they get paid fairly well, $212,000 for Chief Justice John Roberts, $203,000 for the eight associate justices.