Books Deals Can Add Up to Millions of Dollars for Supreme Court Justices

For Supreme Court justices, books deals have become a highly lucrative way to shape the public narrative of their lives and legacies.

The money brought in by those deals, one of the few ways that they can supplement their income, often far eclipses their salaries, roughly $300,000.

A majority of the current justices have published books, most recently Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her memoir, “Lovely One,” which traces the arc of her family from the segregated Jim Crow South to her rise to the Supreme Court, was released this week and shot up Amazon’s best-seller list.

Here’s a closer look.

Six of the nine justices have written books or currently have book deals.

Justice Jackson joins Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas in publishing moving accounts of their childhoods and paths to the court. Justice Sotomayor has also written several children’s books.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch has focused on the law, publishing books describing the ethical and legal issues raised by assisted suicide and euthanasia. His most recent, published this summer, is a series of stories drawn from court cases that he uses to argue that administrative overreach and the increasing number of laws have harmed ordinary Americans.

Two of the newest justices — Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — have book deals in place. Justice Barrett’s book has been described as her views about keeping personal feelings out of judicial rulings. Justice Kavanaugh’s is expected to be a legal memoir that is likely to touch on his bruising confirmation fight.