Legal News

Justice Scalia and Millionaires, Take Two

By Ashby Jones

Law Blog colleague and WSJ Supreme Court reporter Jess Bravin sent along the following item, based on the oral argument yesterday on the so-called Millionaires’ Amendment. (Click here for an earlier blog post on the topic and here for Bravin’s story from today.)

Why do Supreme Court justices complain so much that their salaries–$217,800 for the chief, $208,100 for the associates–are too low? Maybe it’s because, as lawyers, they were never too good at following numbers.

Consider Tuesday’s oral arguments over the so-called Millionaires’ Amendment, the federal law that lifts some political fundraising limits for candidates facing wealthy self-funded opponents, defined as those who pour at least $350,000 of their own cash into their campaign.

Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that practically anybody had that cash available for political activism, if he or she really wanted to tap some family assets. “Are we talking wealthy people here? What’s the average price of a home in the United States? I think it’s a good deal above $350,000, isn’t it?” he said.

Actually, it’s nowhere near that. According to provisional figures from the National Association of Realtors, the average single family home price last month was $246,000. And falling.

None of the other justices offered a correction, and lawyer Andrew Herman, representing millionaire candidate Jack Davis, was quick to feed Scalia’s misunderstanding.

“It certainly is in this area and in many congressional districts in the United States,” Herman said. He’s right about the area the Realtors association classifies as “Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV,” where provisional figures show the median home price as $400,100 for the fourth quarter of 2007. But not exactly on point for the upstate New York congressional district where Davis, a Democrat who made his fortune manufacturing heating elements, is trying for the third time to take a seat currently held by a Republican. In the last quarter of 2007, the median home price for the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area was $105,400.

Photo: Associated Press

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).