Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, could face an ethics inquiry by the Justice Department.
A former colleague of Jane Roberts is asking for an inquiry after claiming that the chief justice’s wife had been paid millions in commissions to place lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by the New York Times.
Jane Roberts had given up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter to avoid conflicts of interest after her husband joined the Supreme Court.
The colleague, Kendal Price, 66, a lawyer in Boston, argued that justices should be required to disclose more information relating to their spouses’ work. While he did not cite any specific Supreme Court decisions, he expressed concern that having a financial relationship with law firms that argue before the court could affect or appear to affect the justices’ impartiality.
“I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Price wrote.
Price and Jane Roberts previously worked as legal recruiters for Major, Lindsey & Africa, a global firm based in Maryland. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, Jane Roberts, and another executive over his dismissal, per the New York Times.
He lost the case, but documents from the case show commissions to Jane Roberts between 2007 to 2014. Six-figure fees are credited to Jane Roberts for placing law partners at firms, including $690,000 in 2012 from one match.
Jane Roberts, who now works at Macrae out of Washington, D.C., previously said that she handled conflicts on a case-by-case basis, taking care to avoid matters with any connections to the chief justice’s work and refraining from working with lawyers that had active Supreme Court cases.
Read the full story here.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.
