Tonight, revealing insight into some of the high dollar payments and luxury gifts received by justices of the US Supreme Court, which include everything from paid foreign trips, six-figure book deals, even concert tickets to Beyoncé. Here now is seeing a Senior Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biscupik for us. Joan, what are these disclosures reveal?

Nice to see you, Wolf. Yes, every year we get the formal reports from the justices that detail what they received the previous year. So what we're looking at now is what came into the justices in 2023. First of all, Justice Clarence Thomas is doing a bit of catch-up. He's listed two trips from 2019 that were on the dime of Harland Crow, a wealthy Texas businessman who's active in conservative causes. You might remember that the news entity ProPublic had published very strong investigative stories about these trips that Clarence Thomas had kept secret, but now he's including these, one to Bali and one to a men-only resort in California, the Bohemian Grove. But then the other thing that we have new from 2023 are several of the justices list book income. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a book coming out this September called Lovely One. It's a memoir, and she has put down the first installment, just first installment, of the money she received from her publisher, and that's $900,000. Dollars. Brett Kavanaugh is now writing a book. When he signed that contract last year, he got $340,000. Neil Gorsich, who has a book coming out in August detailing his anti-regulatory bent, he got another payment, another installment toward that at $250,000.

Then Justice Sotom mayor picked up more royalty. She's been an author since her memoir came out in 2013. Then finally, Wolf, there are some curiosity series of gifts. You mentioned the concert tickets. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, our newest justice, and the first African-American woman on the court, she received four concert tickets to a Beyoncé concert directly from Beyoncé. The total value was about $3,700. Last year on her disclosure report, we saw that she got a very elaborate flower arrangement from Oprah, and that was worth about $1,200. We look for those curiosities as well as the big dollar figures that I mentioned in the books.

All right, Joan Baskupik, thank you very much. I want to bring in NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. She covers the US Supreme Court, does an amazing job for a long time. Nina, thanks very much for coming in. My pleasure. When you hear these bonuses that these justices are getting, what jumps out of you?

Well, these... Gabe Roth, who's head of Fixed the Court and has been probably the most persistent critic of Supreme Court Ethics. He made an observation today. These people probably could make 10 times the amount of money they make if they were in private practice, if they were lawyers instead of Supreme Court justices. He said that he isn't bothered by them getting these big book contracts. After all, journalists do this, too. It's a way to augment your income. As long as they don't participate in cases involving their publishers or use their official staffs to pedal their books, they're perfectly entitled to do this. Some of them have kids in college. I know 300,000 $1,000, which is roughly what they make, is a great deal of money. But it is not in a city like this and when you have multiple children going to college.

But what about Justice Clarence Thomas, who is now publicly disclosed his 2019 trip to Bali. Propublica estimated that that trip wound up costing about $500,000 when you include the boats and the private jets and all of that. That's different than a book contract.

It's very different. It's peculiar because he discloses one night in a hotel in Bali plus meals that were, I guess, paid for by Harlem Crow. But what about the rest of that Indonesia trip? As you said, island hopping on the Crow yacht, private jets, none of that is part of that disclosure. Now, one supposes that he has some theory, some legal theory, I guess, about why he doesn't have to disclose those. And he did have to disclose the Bali hotel, a hotel bill for one night, but it doesn't make much sense to me. I can't figure it out.

Anything wrong with accepting free tickets to a Beyoncé concert?

Well, there is what I call the Washington Post or the New York Times Rule. If you would be embarrassed by seeing it on the front page of the newspaper, you shouldn't do it. I assume that Beyoncé and Justice Brown Jackson have a personal relationship that Beyoncé invited her and gave her the tickets for her husband and two daughters. That would be four tickets. I suspect that she really wanted to do it for them and for herself often, but it doesn't have great optics. It really doesn't.

How does all of this, including the flag controversy, how does all of this reflect on the integrity of the United States Supreme Court? You've covered the Supreme Court for a while.

Well, when you're in the public eye, you have to be like Caesar's wife. It's very difficult because things that seem perfectly normal in your everyday life Chief Justice Roberts, for example, is criticized because his wife is a legal recruiter for law firms. Well, she took that job. She stopped being a lawyer because he became chief justice. She took that job because there wouldn't be a conflict of interest. But you can make almost anything look not great. You and I know this. I don't know about CNN, but I have an ethics are I have to run everything past.

We do, too.

They don't. That's the point. They don't. It's only their judgment. Sometimes their judgment isn't particularly wise when it comes to their own personal conduct and what they would like to accept or not accept or do or not do.

Nina Totenberg, thanks for your excellent coverage of the Supreme Court over these years. I'm a big fan.

Thanks very, very much. Thank you, Wolf.