Right-wing legal interests funded by the megawealthy are routinely feting lower-court judges and treating them to all-expenses-paid trips, which effectively function as a reward system for judges who espouse and maintain hard-line conservative legal views.
The thing is- at least with SCOTUS justices- we can make absolutely anything illegal regarding them and they can just turn around and say, “fuck you, what are you going to do about it?” And the rest of the government says, “uh… nothing I guess?”