SCOTUS NEWS

Alito reports gift of $900 concert tickets in annual financial disclosure

Justice Samuel Alito did not report any reimbursements for travel-related expenses in 2023, according to a financial disclosure form made public on Friday. The form also revealed that Alito accepted concert tickets worth $900 from a German princess.

Each justice is required to file a financial disclosure every year by May 15 with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which makes the forms available online in early June. However, the justices can receive an extension of up to 90 days to submit the forms, as Alito did this year. The disclosures are relatively opaque, and they are intended to provide information about potential conflicts of interest and the justices’ compliance with ethical standards rather than snapshots of the justices’ wealth.

Alito’s form indicated that he holds three honorary positions, two of which intersect with Catholic causes and scholarship. He serves as an honorary chair of the advisory council for the Center for the Constitution and Catholic Intellectual Tradition, a program at the Catholic University School of Law that “promotes scholarship that explores the relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition for American constitutionalism.”

And along with his wife, Martha-Ann, Alito serves as a member of the honorary board for the Franciscan Monastery for the Holy Land, a Washington, D.C., monastery “whose purpose is to support the Holy Land, its people, and its holy sites.” The monastery also has more than 50,000 visitors per year to see its gardens and “full-sized replicas of shrines from the Holy Land.”

Alito serves as an honorary advisory board member for the Bolch Judicial Institute, a program established at Duke Law School in 2018 to (among other things) create educational opportunities for sitting judges in the United States

Alito reported two trips for which he received transportation, food, or lodging in 2022. He received lodging and meals during a trip to Duke University to teach a class, and he was reimbursed for a four-day trip to Rome paid for by Notre Dame Law School.

Interest in the justices’ financial disclosures intensified last year in the wake of reporting by ProPublica about luxury travel (among other things) that was not included in several financial disclosures. In April 2023, ProPublica reported that a Dallas billionaire, Harlan Crow, had repeatedly hosted Justice Clarence Thomas on cruises on his super-yacht and private-jet travel. ProPublica also reported last year that Alito did not report a 2008 fishing trip to Alaska in which he flew on a private jet chartered by billionaire Paul Singer. Singer’s hedge fund came before the court several times in the years that followed, ProPublica noted, but Alito did not recuse himself.

Alito reported one gift in 2023: concert tickets worth $900 from Gloria von Thurn und Taxis. A recent article in Tatler, the British high society magazine, indicated that von Thurn und Taxis, a German princess, is best known these days “as a Catholic activist and proselyte.” The form does not indicate who played at the concert.

Alito continues to maintain a robust investment portfolio that contains mutual funds but also shares in individual companies – including Molson Coors, 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Boeing, Caterpillar, and Dow – that sometimes appear at the court.

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.