Law students work their whole lives to become judges and then to ascend to the Supreme Court.

So why are they writing children’s books?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, probably copying Hillary Clinton, kickstarted the phenomenon by churning out children’s books and then having her staff pressure institutions into buying them.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had been previously criticized for not recusing herself in cases involving Penguin which had paid her over $3 million.  Justice Sotomayor, after publishing a memoir no one was asking for ‘My Beloved World’, began writing children’s books. Would Penguin really be publishing Sotomayor’s feeble efforts at writing children’s books, ‘Just Help!: How to Build a Better World’, ‘Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You’ and (coming soon) ‘Just Shine!: How to Be a Better You’ if she weren’t a Supreme Court justice?

This provides a nice income extreme for Sotomayor who we’re supposed to believe became a children’s book author on her own because kids just love her.

Or institutions bow the knee to her.

Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009.

In 2019, as Sotomayor traveled the country to promote her new children’s book, “Just Ask!,” library and community college officials in Portland, Oregon, jumped at the chance to host an event.

They put in long hours and accommodated the shifting requests of Sotomayor’s court staff. Then, as the public cost of hosting the event soared almost tenfold, a Sotomayor aide emailed with a different, urgent concern: She said the organizers did not buy enough copies of the justice’s book, which attendees had to purchase or have on hand in order to meet Sotomayor after her talk.

The Washington Post has an article ‘Supreme Court justices are writing children’s books — and earning big’, that manages to somehow focus on the conservative justices, while defending Sotomayor, but the bottom line is that nobody seriously believes that kids want didactic books by justices.

This is a cash-in that no one should be doing. And major questions need to be raised about why Penguin and other ‘big three’ publishers have been putting that kind of money into the Supreme Court.