How Much Money Do Supreme Court Judges Make

How much do Supreme Court justices make? That's what many people are wondering with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be the next associate justice on the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court associate justices will earn $255,300 this year, according to the US Courts, while Chief Justice John Roberts' salary is $267,000.
That's more than double what judges typically earn in the US, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Brett Kavanaugh, who has served on the Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit since 2006, was nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next associate justice on the Supreme Court.

The 2018 salary of a Supreme Court associate justice is $255,300, according to the US Courts. Chief Justice John Roberts' salary is $267,000.

Supreme Court justices earn more than double the $115,520 per year judges typically earn in the US, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If confirmed, Kavanaugh would receive a raise of almost 16% from his current, $220,600-per-year salary for his role as a circuit judge.

Adjusted for inflation, the current associate justice salary is lower than it was in 2008. At that time, Supreme Court Justices earned $208,100, which is around $243,000 in today's dollars. The chief justice earned a 2018 equivalent of about $254,000.

Justices also tend to earn plenty of money on the side, Business Insider reported in 2015.

Antonin Scalia, who served as an associate justice from 1986 to his death in 2016, earned $60,000 in noninvestment income in 2014. More than half of that was royalty payments for the books he had written.

Meanwhile, Roberts held $250,000 in Time Warner stocks and $500,000 in Microsoft stocks.

Rachel Premack

Senior Features Reporter

Rachel is a senior features reporter at Business Insider. Rachel has reported on Bon Appétit's culture of racism, safety concerns among pilots who fly for Amazon, and the 2019 trucking "bloodbath." She has appeared on ABC News, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, France24, and other major outlets to discuss her coverage. She was a Stigler Center Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the spring of 2019. Before joining Business Insider, she was a journalist in Seoul, South Korea. Her articles were published in The Washington Post, Forbes, Foreign Policy, The Ringer, Quartz, CityLab, Business of Fashion, The Verge, and others. She's also published research on the Korean and Japanese economies in SAGE Business Researcher, a business school textbook. Originally from Metro Detroit, Rachel studied history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her Twitter account is @rrpre. If you'd like to get in touch with Rachel, please email her at rpremack@businessinsider.com or rpremack@protonmail.com.