To the editor:
It is not my practice to respond to erroneous reports in
the media, but your front-page story on Sept. 18,
authored by Tony Mauro and Sam Loewenberg, is such a mean-spirited attack upon my personal integrity that I make an exception. Under the headline "Who Really Wants to Lift Ban on Fees?" and the subhead "Scalia's
Frustration Seen as Factor for Reinstating Judges'
Honoraria," Mauro and Loewenberg assert (on the basis of
unnamed "knowledgeable sources") that my "frustration"
about the honoraria ban was the "trigger" behind the
pending legislation that would eliminate the ban.
According to the article, the honoraria ban is "one of
several factors that caused [me] to muse aloud from time
to time about leaving the Court." It is stated (without
attribution) that the bill has become known as the "Keep
Scalia on the Court" bill, and a snide caption under a
photo of me reads "Banking on the Hill."
All this makes gossipy, titillating (and thus
characteristically Mauronic) copy, but in fact the
honorarium ban makes no difference to me. For many
years, all of my outside earned income has come from
teaching, which is not covered by that ban, and that is
the only compensable extrajudicial activity I am
interested in pursuing. (The tradition of federal
judges' teaching is a venerable one, going back as far
as Joseph Story, who served on this Court while he was
also a professor at Harvard. I learned torts at Harvard
from Calvert Magruder, a distinguished judge on the 1st
Circuit Court of Appeals.) What limits my earnings from
teaching is not the honorarium ban, but the $21,195
limit on all outside income earned by judges. I have
indeed been critical of that arbitrary limitation,
especially as applied to judges who gave up their
private pursuits and committed to federal service before
it was in place. Contrary to the unattributed statements
in the article, however, I have never suggested to
anyone that I would leave the bench because of that
limitation. Nor have I been a moving force behind the
legislation eliminating the honorarium ban. I have only
discussed it twice - not to urge it but to say, in
response to inquiry, that I thought it was a good idea.
The article's allegations of my preoccupation with money
are not only false; they are not even plausible. When I
became a federal Court of Appeals judge in 1982, I took
a slight cut from what would have been my next year's
academic salary as Professor of Law at the University of
Chicago. I also gave up the ability to do consulting
work, which at that time was nearly doubling my academic
salary. And finally, I gave up a fringe benefit accorded
by the University of Chicago, which paid faculty
children's college tuition anywhere in the country, up
to the level of Chicago's - a significant benefit for
someone with nine children. The notion that one who was
so indifferent to financial gain when he joined the
Court of Appeals with nine children still to send
through college, should contemplate resigning from the
Supreme Court for financial reasons now that the last
child is in her junior year is on its face absurd. No
reasonable person would believe it; and only someone
intent on writing a slanted story would assert it.
Justice Antonin Scalia
U.S. Supreme Court
Washington, D.C.