FIVE members of SCOTUS recused themselves from Ta-Nehisi Coates's case. 4 of them have book deals with a publisher involved. And Alito might own a related stock. [More inside] (archive.ph)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by InevitableSwing@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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The Supreme Court said Monday it would not take up the case Ralph W. Baker, Jr. v. Ta-Nehisi Coates et al, a copyright dispute in which Baker alleged Coates’ book “The Water Dancer” plagiarized Baker’s book “Shock Exchange: How Inner-City Kids From Brooklyn Predicted the Great Recession and the Pain Ahead.”

[...]

The justices did not give a reason for why they were recusing and the court has not responded to a request for comment, but Barrett, Gorsuch, Jackson and Sotomayor all published books through Penguin Random House, whose parent company Bertelsmann was named as a party in the case.

It’s unclear why Alito recused himself from the case, though judicial ethics watchdog Fix the Court speculates it’s possible he could have purchased stock in one of the other parties named in the case, such as Apple, Warner Bros. or Disney, or Amazon, which owns MGM Studios, a party in the suit.

A Bluesky thread...

Ketanji Brown Jackson "signed a book deal, reportedly worth $3 million, in 2022 after she joined the Court. Penguin Random House will publish her memoir."

Amy Coney Barrett "reportedly signed a $2 million book deal with Penguin Random House in 2021"

Neil Gorsuch: "Penguin Random House, which published a book that consisted of his writings and speeches with a splash of memoir thrown in, paid him $650,000 from 2018 to 2020. The next year, he signed another deal with HarperCollins for $250,000."

Sonia Sotomayor: $3.8 million in book deals since joining the court

https://subium.com/profile/zacheverson.com/post/3lpkvppkzms2y

There are source links at the thread if you're interested.

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[-] Carl@hexbear.net 18 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Baker loses his appeal, which frankly is the right call and idk why it got to the point of SC members recusing themselves in the first place. Baker's claim of plagiarism was extremely flimsy, I read some of the supposedly plagiarized passages and they have literally nothing in common except being written in a conversational style.

This all reads like a publicity plot to me. The SC wants to do something that makes them look ethical and principled to counter all of the recent news about their blatant corruption, so they pick this case where they were absolutely not going to reverse the lower court's decision in order to do it. Really they should have just indicated from the jump that they had no interest in taking the case.