US Supreme Court justices and donors mingle at campus visits. These documents show the ethical dilemmas

Another aspect to what is happening here is that even if there's no direct corruption, which I'm not saying the evidence supports or not, what is happening is that judges, politicians etc. are being influenced by having disproportionate exposure to certain perspectives.

Think about how you might behave or act towards someone you know, versus someone you don't know, and actions or behaviors taken by people you know versus those you don't know. You'll generally favor a person you know over someone you don't know, you'll have more generous interpretations of behaviors or actions taken by someone you know, and your worldview becomes more shaped by things you have more experience with and you will favor those perspectives more.

In the same way, even if these judges don't believe that accepting lavish trips or invites to various events etc. influence their decisions (which is giving a benefit of the doubt they possibly don't deserve), what they aren't acknowledging is that they're gaining more perspective towards these individuals than others, which invariably will lead to favoritism of their perspectives. I'm not saying it's bad that they learn more about billionaires or their lives etc., but they cannot reasonably counter this exposure with the lives of everyone else on this planet, they're biasing themselves towards things that will inevitably benefit billionaires more whether they believe they are doing this or not.

It's hard for someone to accept a trip from someone, and then look at the world in a way that might possibly make them think poorly of the person who is providing all of these good things to their life even if the most objective perspective of the world should make them think poorly of those people or at least of the actions of those people.