At least it is if you read all the reply tweets from people who think the business of America is business! I’m sure the fact that her husband is the Chief Justice of the United States has no bearing on her career or her success. None. None at all.🚨🚨🚨SCOOP: New whistleblower docs show Jane Roberts, who is married to SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million placing lawyers at elite firms — https://t.co/uB82RgJ8YC
— Mattathias Schwartz (@Schwartzesque) April 28, 2023
Why, it would be unseemly to suggest such a thing! Or to suggest she makes a lot more money for the family from her husband’s position than he earns for that position. That, too, would be most unseemly!
Two years after John Roberts' confirmation as the Supreme Court's chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.
Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. "There are many paths to the good life," she said. "There are so many things to do if you're open to change and opportunity."
And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.
The woman who revealed this worked with Roberts at the same recruiting firm:
When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong," the whistleblower, Kendal B. Price, who worked alongside Jane Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in an interview. "During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane's clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It's natural that they'd do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive."
I will tell you that lawyers who have appeared before the Supreme Court even once are a tiny fraternity. Law firms that specialize in that practice specialize indeed.
Roberts' apparent $10.3 million in compensation puts her toward the top of the payscale for legal headhunters. Price's disclosures, which were filed under federal whistleblower-protection laws and are now in the hands of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, add to the mounting questions about how Supreme Court justices and their families financially benefit from their special status, an area that Senate Democrats are vowing to investigate after a series of disclosure lapses by the justices themselves.
Roberts wasn’t getting paid just because she was an extra double-plus good matchmaker with a keen eye for legal talent. It doesn’t really appear that way, anyway. And it’s appearance that counts here.
The mob looks at the Supreme Court with nothing but envy. https://t.co/Dztl69c8PM
— Schooley ♟️ (@Rschooley) April 28, 2023
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