The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Do Supreme Court Justices Have Real Friends?
A response to Josh.
I had a different reaction than Josh Blackman did to the comment of the Supreme Court's Public Information Officer Patricia McCabe about Beyoncé—it struck me as likely just McCabe's own well-meaning-but-odd comment, rather than evidence of a nefarious quid pro quo between Beyoncé and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—but I wanted to focus instead on a comment Josh makes that strikes me as particularly unlikely to be true:
For all the outrage about Justice Thomas, no one doubts that he and Harlan Crow are genuine friends. They met nearly three decades ago, and have forged a close bond. Whatever generosity that Crow shares with Thomas is based on a kinship and connection that has been developed for years.
I have no particular reason to doubt that Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow are very close friends. With that said, it seems wrong to say that no one doubts that. A lot of people do. And to my mind it raises an interesting question: Do Supreme Court Justices have real friends? Or maybe, more specifically, if you're a Justice, how do you know who is a real friend, and how do you know who has decided to "befriend" you for their own personal or political reasons?
Sure, if you have an old friend from childhood, or a law school roommate you've kept in consistent touch with over the years, that's very likely a real friend. If you were friends with someone before you became someone important, you can probably trust that friendship.
It seems to me, though, that new Justices should be and presumably usually are rather wary of those seeking their friendship. A lot of people interested in politics would love to be friends with Justices. For some, it may just be fascination with power. Justices have a lot of that, and they have life tenure, too.
And some of that interest may have an agenda in mind. My sense is that, when a Justice arrives in D.C.—or if they're in D.C. already, when they reach the Court— there's often a line of people quite eager to make friends with them who, lo and behold, might just have a particular set of views that they want to eventually impress upon their new friend. I would imagine that, if you're on the Court, some skepticism of your new "friends" might be in order.
On a largely but not entirely unrelated front, I wonder what it's like to be a Justice visiting a law school. From what I can tell, it's fairly common, when a school is so lucky as to have a Justice visit, for the Justice to be feted like royalty. And what to think when (as I've seen at several places) the Dean arranges for the Justice to meet during the visit with a few current 3Ls who just happen to be at the top of the class and are preparing their clerkship applications to the Court? I assume the Justices understand what is happening, as it's not all that subtle. And maybe, when that's the way people in your field interact with you for so long, it becomes kinda normal. Still, it must be odd.
