Justice Thomas and now Justice Alito present us with concerns about SCOTUS. Given recent polls indicating a serious decline in respect for the Court by the American public, these concerns are shared by many. Much like the controversy around protests at American colleges and universities over the war in Gaza, the right to free speech informs and complicates our analysis. But we leave aside the Gaza free speech controversies for the moment and turn to SCOTUS.

In both the cases of Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, activities by their wives appear to raise concerns. We have written about Justice Thomas’ issues of accepting significant financial benefits from private citizens, some of them with matters pending before the court, before, and do not revisit those issues now. What we turn our attention to now are activities conducted by the wives of the two justices.