Most justice biographies — including the Court’s own and most reference sites — cover career history and case output without addressing ethics or recusal conduct at all. These profiles do the opposite: each one consolidates a justice’s documented ethics and recusal record, sourced, in one place, and explains what it means for the case for reform. All nine sitting justices are covered below, and each page will be updated as new reporting emerges.

  • Clarence Thomas — $4.75 million in undisclosed gifts from Harlan Crow, 54 recusals for his son’s conflicts, zero for his wife’s.
  • Samuel Alito — leads the Court in recusals because of his individual stock holdings, but refused every call to step aside from the January 6 cases.
  • John Roberts — his wife’s $10.3 million in law-firm recruiting commissions reported as “salary,” and the ethics code he designed with no enforcement mechanism.
  • Neil Gorsuch — an undisclosed property buyer who ran a firm arguing before the Court, and a recusal that came only after reporters found the conflict.
  • Brett Kavanaugh — up to $150,000 in personal debt that vanished before his confirmation, and a presidential immunity recusal question dating back to his own pre-bench legal writing.
  • Amy Coney Barrett — a $2 million book deal that closed months before Dobbs, and a genuinely more forthcoming recusal record than several colleagues, undercut by her own defense of never explaining it.
  • Sonia Sotomayor — taxpayer-funded staff pushing colleges and libraries to buy her books, and a chambers process failure that led her to skip recusals in cases involving her own publisher.
  • Elena Kagan — the 2012 Affordable Care Act recusal fight, a 2026 contested climate-case recusal demand, and her record as an early advocate for recusal transparency.
  • Ketanji Brown Jackson — nearly $3 million in book advances, an unresolved ethics complaint over her husband’s income, and a Harvard recusal pledge narrowed by a procedural case split.

All nine sitting justices are now covered. For the structural reforms this record points toward, see our complete guide to term limits and court packing and the case for a binding ethics code.