>For the most part these rules and
principles are not new: The Court has long had the
equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules
derived from a variety of sources, including statutory
provisions, the code that applies to other members of the
federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the
Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and
historic practice. The absence of a Code, however, has led
in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of
this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard
themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel
this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which
largely represents a codification of principles that we have
long regarded as governing our conduct.
----
From a quick scan, I think the inclusion of spouses in some of the suggestions for recusal are probably among the most notable. Also:
>A Justice may attend a “fundraising event” of law-
related or other nonprofit organizations, but a
Justice should not knowingly be a speaker, a guest
of honor, or featured on the program of such event.
In general, an event is a “fundraising event” if
proceeds from the event exceed its costs or if
donations are solicited in connection with the event.
Is maybe interesting, especially re: Federalist Society and Leonard Leo.
At any rate, it says "should" and "may" rather than "must" so YMMV.
One of the noticeable lacks I see is that there's a mention that a justice shouldn't be a member of a civic or charitable organization if it's going to be engaged in litigation before the court, but there's no corresponding mention for legal organizations that may be engaged in litigation. Given that one of the issues is the role of the Federalist Society in the many seeming conflicts of interests it produces, this does seem like an intentional oversight.
I think at that point you'd run into the infringement of first amendment rights for the judges themselves. You'd really say they aren't allowed to openly be a member of the ACLU or whatever?
I missed the part discussing enforcement and consequences, because surely this wouldn’t just be a mealy mouthed list of suggestions without recourse. What would the point of that be other than a fig leaf over Clarence Thomas?
This is a fine gesture, but it does not solve the fundamental problem that Supreme Court justices are an unelected super-government with lifetime appointments and zero accountability.
The whole institution is absurd and undemocratic and, as Clarence Thomas has proved [0], ripe with opportunities for corruption. A non-binding code of ethics doesn't change that.
Impeachment is a political solution, though. Conviction in the house is a simple majority, but removal from office (or other forms of punishment) requires a 2/3 majority in the senate. That's not going to happen in the current environment, no matter how unsuitable an individual might be for office.
> unelected super-government with lifetime appointments and zero accountability
And what's the problem? That's exactly the point of this system — a part of government that is still _appointed by elected representatives_, but is not populist.
Because everyone wants neutral fair referees when their laws/rights are being interpreted but that’s an impossibility because humans aren’t neutral.
The fact that there are problems with an alternative set up (oh no, unstable populism!) doesn’t mean the current paradigm is itself flawless.
The parts of government that exist to slow things are always “very important to stability/safety/growth of the nation” but a lot of us just see them as the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible.
Move fast and break things, especially governments.
> The fact that there are problems with an alternative set up (oh no, unstable populism!) doesn’t mean the current paradigm is itself flawless.
You're absolutely technically correct. In the same vain, this doesn't mean that there's any better alternative.
> the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible
You could say the same about many other things that benefit society as a whole. Turns out, things that make society rich and stable often help those in power stay in power.
> Move fast and break things, especially governments.
Unfortunately, I've been on the internet too long to be 100% sure it's sarcasm. So, just in case — please don't break governments. And may be don't actually move fast with them. Thank you.
Same is true of most of government. From the FDA to the ATF practical life altering choices are increasingly made by a unelected permanent government unfettered by things like accountability.
Those departments are executive branch departments, their leadership can be fired by the President and can be appointed with a simple majority in the Senate - hence how we've had 7 FDA commissioners since 2017 - not remotely comparable to the US Supreme Court.
Seems odd to call the leadership of the FDA "an unelected permanent government" and then linking to a commissioner's job after they resigned from the FDA. Even more ironically for this particular discussion - the legality of this pretty open corruption is specifically due to decisions made by the Supreme Court, who have gutted all of the bribery, official corruption, and campaign finance laws we used to have.
> Curtis Wright, once a director at the US Food and Drug Administration who oversaw evaluation for pain medication, got a position with a first-year compensation package of $400,000 at Purdue Pharma a year after he led the approval of OxyContin
> Wright had confessed in a sworn deposition that he "might" have written the portion of the FDA package insert that said OxyContin was "believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug."
> OxyContin was the "most prescribed brand name narcotic medication" for treating moderate to severe pain by 2001, according to a report by the US Government Accountability Office. Deaths from prescription opioid overdose quadrupled between 1999 to 2019, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 247,000 deaths from prescription opioid overdose over the last two decades.
Can they? For practical purposes they can but it is about as doable as impeachment of a sitting justice, it is more of a power that exists on paper but can not actually be utilized due to politics and traditions.
>>7 FDA commissioners since 2017
hmmm... were they fired or did they take very high paying Big Pharma Jobs further enriching themselves from the corrupt deep state?
What are you talking about? Department heads resign or are fired constantly. In any case, most have set terms and leave when their term is up -- they are absolutely nothing like the Supreme Court.
The political appointee's that go in and out with every political administration and are political figure heads
Or the actual Dept Heads, the ones that actually do the regulation and enforcement, the ones that have been there for decades and work for every administration
I try to reconcile this with the fact DEAs judge 30 years ago ruled pot should be rescheduled and here we are 30 years later and only now has the president gotten to attempt to get the executive underlings to act as they themselves ruled after their judges review.
It's not really zero accountability. Supreme Court justices are subject to impeachment. It happened once, although Samuel Chase was acquitted. Yes, impeachment is notoriously partisan, but that's democracy?
It's a council of 9 justices who vote on final decisions. They are appointed by politicians who the people vote for. This is intentional, for the same reason that the Senate wasn't meant to be directly voted for by normal citizens either: normal citizens usually don't have the political involvement necessary to make educated decisions about who to appoint the position. In theory, at least.
It's a balance between politicians playing the circlejerk game to help each other with their misdeeds, and average joes voting for imbeciles.
>> for the same reason that the Senate wasn't meant to be directly voted for by normal citizens either: normal citizens usually don't have the political involvement necessary to make educated decisions
I am going to take slight issue with this, The reason the Senate was appointed as not because "normal citizens usually don't have the political involvement necessary to make educated decisions" it was because we are a Union of States. ie the United States. The states are suppose to have some level of sovereignty from the Federal Government, Previous to the Civil War most citizens were loyal to their State first, then the country.
Post Civil War the federal government started to rewrite the relationship, however the Senate was to be the States representative in the Federal Government, thus why there are 2 for every State. The House Represented the people, thus why it is apportioned by population.
A Senator was not meant to be the citizens voice in the Federal government, but was meant be the Voice of the State Government from which they were appointed.
Yes, that is true. I'm meaning the senators' interactions at a state-to-federal level is further beyond the average citizen's purview, whereas state senators are more likely to know who's fit to represent the state as a whole. As it stands now, we basically just have two houses of representatives, which is so stupid.
The Supreme Court is laid out in the Constitution, but this decision is where the court derives its power of judicial review:
> Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States.
Yep. Ruth Ginsburg was another corrupt one, taking lavish trips funded by Israeli billionaires. But whoops, I wasn't supposed to mention the ones people here may like.
Do you think maybe there should be a distinction between trips reported on annual disclosure statements and those taken privately and without being reported?
Yes there should be distinctions if level of corruption. For instance stealing candy from a baby and putting an ad in the paper saying you've done it is probably less bad than stealing candy when nobody sees it. And no I don't think this is the same as stealing candy, since some fucking pedant is gonna make that comment.
Agreed! I think the Supreme Court is crazy. Depending on the decade, the constitution may or may not allow segregation, gay marriage, abortion, or slavery. You have to squint sometimes and turn the document sideways.
Your guess is as good as mine what the current Supreme Court will decide the constitution says or doesn't say. And on some issues they take decades of latency to come to these decisions.
I do think it is insane that we allow this in the modern world. Not to mention all the self-righteous posturing of lawyers absolutely convinced this system epitomizes "justice".
Kind of tangential to your point, but slavery was made unconstitutional by a constitutional amendment (the 13th), not by the courts, so that's not a good example.
Despite that being passed in 186X, the court didn't have a clue if it applied to the involuntary draft, peonage contracts, or chain gangs until decades later.
> Not to mention all the self-righteous posturing of lawyers absolutely convinced this system epitomizes "justice".
I always had respect for the legal profession, but the way the Supreme Court is acting and the fact that nothing is being done about it has made me lose all respect for anyone in the legal profession.
Sure, most lawyers and judges might disagree with the actions of the Supreme Court, but lawyers are hesitant to say anything because they might end up as counsel in a Supreme Court case and don't want the court's ire.
The state of affairs really highlights how much of a dress-up, make-believe game the Legal profession has become.
The lifetime appointments are designed to put them outside of the scope of politicians and the need to run for re-election. I guess you could serve a single 15 year term with no option to rejoin the court.
> zero accountability
Supreme Court justices can be impeached and removed from office.
Yeah but practically speaking they can't be as long as their crimes benefit at least a third of the Senate. Frankly, the corruption of the court seems to fall substantially along party lines, so as long as one party never holds 67 senate seats there is no mechanism for accountability.
Isn't that the strength of the institution though? If they were elected, they'd be fundraising nonstop for re-election and be far less concerned about their actual job.
I definitely would give them term limits and a maximum age. Let's say 16 years and a president gets 2 nominations per term (more if a judge dies or gets sick). Watching Bader-Ginsburgh basically die on the bench should be a warning.
This idea that democracy is the end all be all is false and dangerous, very dangerous. Mob rule is never the solution to anything (as we are seeing with the massive mobs in support of terrorist organization Hamas)
There are all kinds of checks built into the American REPUBLIC that are undemocratic purposefully to prevent the whims of the mob for ruling.
Personally I would like to remove many of the "democratic" processes we have put in place since the founding, namely the election of senators by popular vote, The senate should be returned to be appointed by State Legislators.
If you want to reform the Court system end Stare decisis and make the court rule on the constitutionally of each case on their merits based on the actual words of the Constitution as was their original charge and their constitutional mandate
You may want to read the article since others have issues as well.
>Many of those stories focused on Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel and other financial ties with wealthy conservative donors including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. But Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor also have been under scrutiny.
Frankly you are making a massive assumption. We don't know how deep this behavior goes with the other justices. In 2018, Ginsburg had more trips paid for by others than any other justice for example. Since 2004, Bryer had more trips than any other justice.
The fact that people are only calling out one person seems very telling to me. This problem is far deeper than one guy or one side.
Frankly those are trips that were disclosed and Thomas’s trips weren’t. That’s one of the biggest problems with what Thomas did (and shows that he knew what he did wouldn’t pass muster).
Of course, that’s assuming you’re not one of the people who believes that he truly thought a trip on a private plane does not need to be disclosed because the seat would have otherwise been taken by someone else so it wasn’t actually a benefit.
They received significantly more trips paid by others than Thomas. That is what I meant by worse.
Also, as far as I can tell it looks like Thomas may have disclosed some of his trips. I'm not clear on that though. It is not clear how many trips the other justices took and didn't disclose.
Good! Let's bring it all into the open. At a minimum it will show that these supposedly ethical people are basically just playthings paid for by billionaires. It's pretty crazy that low level government employees have way stricter ethical requirements than the higher ups.
I suspect there’s a lot of gray areas and I suspect justices of all stripes have tripped over the gray area multiple times.
But I think all the justices can see what Thomas was doing was pretty awful and I doubt any of the other justices, even those whose views I find abhorrent, would have gone that far.
And we’re only talking about justices’ actions themselves. This ethics code very clearly brings in consideration of the judge’s spouse’s activities as well, something which, once again is a major problem with Thomas, and none of the other judges as far as I can tell.
>But I think all the justices can see what Thomas was doing was pretty awful and I doubt any of the other justices, even those whose views I find abhorrent, would have gone that far.
I'm not sure that is the case. Ginsburg got a trip from a person and then the court declined to take up a case against said person.[1] The whole article is quite good so I would recommend reading the whole thing.
>This ethics code very clearly brings in consideration of the judge’s spouse’s activities as well, something which, once again is a major problem with Thomas, and none of the other judges as far as I can tell.
If his wife had wanted to give a speech and Thomas told her no, how many articles would there have been about the mean, misogynist, conservative man controlling his wife? It was a lose lose for Thomas on this so long as his wife wanted to do it.
I think this is on his wife, not him. Justice Breyer defended Thomas on this [2] as well.
There are examples of other justices' spouses doing similar things. Roberts' wife for example [3]. I'm sure there are more cases as well.
This is an interesting attempt to ward off the growing skepticism of judicial supremacy in some groups. There is a fascinating struggle between judicial supremacy and constitutional supremacy in America with a long history. Obviously there are pros and cons to each view, and who is for or against one or the other often changes depending on the social issue at hand. I don't think a code of ethics will be very effective. A more substantial move would be to introduce term-limits.
As a foreigner who isn't in the know, what does constitutional supremacy look like in practical terms? Isn't it still the judges who have the last word on how the constitution is to be interpreted and applied?
Judicial supremacy is the idea that the judiciary is the sole arbiter of constitutional meaning. Lincoln, reacting to a ruling that upheld that black slaves “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" said:
> The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
Which is actually more nuanced than just "you can ignore the supreme court whenever." Instead, it's articulating the idea that the SC has to be balanced with congress and elected officials. The idea that the SC is the sole arbiter of constitutional meaning grates against the democratically elected power of congress and the executive. An SC that constantly rejects congress risks overstepping and delegitimizing it's very power and role. For instance, congress might simply ignore a ruling, or strip its jurisdiction over certain matters, or it might change the size of the court. This of course could equally backfire on congress and the president. It's, as always, a balancing act of checks and balances rather than just the SC always getting what they want. Constitutional supremacy then is more like the argument that sometimes the judiciary has to be saved from itself.
The debate has a fascinating history in American politics.
I don’t think this has any impact on the broader question of judicial vs constitutional supremacy.
I think this simply tries to address the fact that some of the justices have been ridiculously corrupt.
I mean, think about it, irrespective of your political leanings, you’re a judge whose basically forgone the much greater sums of money they could have made going into private service, in return for the comfort of a lifetime appointment, respect from the vast majority of people, and an effort to serve the country.
And there’s this 1 colleague of yours whose wife is raking in money from people whose cases you’re hearing, and is going on paid vacations with billionaires, and his mom is getting her house essentially gifted by another billionaire, etc.
You’d be pissed st this guy even if he was on “your side”. Just on a personal level it must be infuriating for the other 8 justices.
>>Just on a personal level it must be infuriating for the other 8 justices
this assumes that the practice is not common, the fact remains that most of these "violations" have been known for years and years, but it politically advantageous to go after this justice at this time.
It is all political, not some altruistic sense of ethics, Biden has been after Thomas since his confirmation
This is a band-aid on a broken leg. There is no enforcement and no penalty for walking right past ethics into outright bribery for SCOTUS and some sheet of paper with no teeth isn't changing that.
They may as well fine them $50 every time they accept a bribe.
Term limits would go much, much further and you'll notice the absence.
The founders clearly didn't envision the court becoming as politicized as it is now. They basically hand-waved away the problem of how to interpret laws. If the laws were written in some kind of unambiguous formal system, then there wouldn't be a need for a court. But no such system exists, so we have this read-time political power corresponding to the write-time political power of the Legislative branch.
It's pretty clear the founders wanted some magic box to tell everyone how the laws applied in a given situation, and designed the rest of the system around that. They attempted to create that with the Judicial branch. It's clear from the lack of term limits that they thought the Justices would be apolitical. However, there is no mechanism forcing the justices to interpret the laws in the simplest, most literal way. Instead we have increasingly stretched interpretations used to affect political change sans representative legislature.
This has to be the most disappointing band-aid they possibly could've trotted out to the American Public. And by "Band-aid", I mean, "Piece of scotch tape they're slapping on a gaping wound and saying it's 'fixed'."
My biggest fear is that the American public is going to look at this and say to themselves "oh look, they fixed the problem!"
89 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadSo, probably not in our lifetimes
>For the most part these rules and principles are not new: The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice. The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.
----
From a quick scan, I think the inclusion of spouses in some of the suggestions for recusal are probably among the most notable. Also:
>A Justice may attend a “fundraising event” of law- related or other nonprofit organizations, but a Justice should not knowingly be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such event. In general, an event is a “fundraising event” if proceeds from the event exceed its costs or if donations are solicited in connection with the event.
Is maybe interesting, especially re: Federalist Society and Leonard Leo.
At any rate, it says "should" and "may" rather than "must" so YMMV.
Oh wait…
The whole institution is absurd and undemocratic and, as Clarence Thomas has proved [0], ripe with opportunities for corruption. A non-binding code of ethics doesn't change that.
[0]: https://www.propublica.org/series/supreme-court-scotus
They can be impeached?
It's accountability, but in theory only.
That's true for much more than the Supreme Court though.
To answer your question: yes.
And what's the problem? That's exactly the point of this system — a part of government that is still _appointed by elected representatives_, but is not populist.
The fact that there are problems with an alternative set up (oh no, unstable populism!) doesn’t mean the current paradigm is itself flawless.
The parts of government that exist to slow things are always “very important to stability/safety/growth of the nation” but a lot of us just see them as the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible.
Move fast and break things, especially governments.
You're absolutely technically correct. In the same vain, this doesn't mean that there's any better alternative.
> the artifacts the rich and powerful put in place to ensure they and their friends and family stay rich and powerful for as long as possible
You could say the same about many other things that benefit society as a whole. Turns out, things that make society rich and stable often help those in power stay in power.
> Move fast and break things, especially governments.
Unfortunately, I've been on the internet too long to be 100% sure it's sarcasm. So, just in case — please don't break governments. And may be don't actually move fast with them. Thank you.
Guy is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the addiction of millions. He wasn't elected and he wont be punished.
> Curtis Wright, once a director at the US Food and Drug Administration who oversaw evaluation for pain medication, got a position with a first-year compensation package of $400,000 at Purdue Pharma a year after he led the approval of OxyContin
> Wright had confessed in a sworn deposition that he "might" have written the portion of the FDA package insert that said OxyContin was "believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug."
> OxyContin was the "most prescribed brand name narcotic medication" for treating moderate to severe pain by 2001, according to a report by the US Government Accountability Office. Deaths from prescription opioid overdose quadrupled between 1999 to 2019, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 247,000 deaths from prescription opioid overdose over the last two decades.
>>7 FDA commissioners since 2017
hmmm... were they fired or did they take very high paying Big Pharma Jobs further enriching themselves from the corrupt deep state?
Or the actual Dept Heads, the ones that actually do the regulation and enforcement, the ones that have been there for decades and work for every administration
It's a balance between politicians playing the circlejerk game to help each other with their misdeeds, and average joes voting for imbeciles.
I am going to take slight issue with this, The reason the Senate was appointed as not because "normal citizens usually don't have the political involvement necessary to make educated decisions" it was because we are a Union of States. ie the United States. The states are suppose to have some level of sovereignty from the Federal Government, Previous to the Civil War most citizens were loyal to their State first, then the country.
Post Civil War the federal government started to rewrite the relationship, however the Senate was to be the States representative in the Federal Government, thus why there are 2 for every State. The House Represented the people, thus why it is apportioned by population.
A Senator was not meant to be the citizens voice in the Federal government, but was meant be the Voice of the State Government from which they were appointed.
> Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
I'm from The Netherlands, so I'm lacking certain insights into the US
Your guess is as good as mine what the current Supreme Court will decide the constitution says or doesn't say. And on some issues they take decades of latency to come to these decisions.
I do think it is insane that we allow this in the modern world. Not to mention all the self-righteous posturing of lawyers absolutely convinced this system epitomizes "justice".
Despite that being passed in 186X, the court didn't have a clue if it applied to the involuntary draft, peonage contracts, or chain gangs until decades later.
The courts are so slow in this country.
I always had respect for the legal profession, but the way the Supreme Court is acting and the fact that nothing is being done about it has made me lose all respect for anyone in the legal profession.
Sure, most lawyers and judges might disagree with the actions of the Supreme Court, but lawyers are hesitant to say anything because they might end up as counsel in a Supreme Court case and don't want the court's ire.
The state of affairs really highlights how much of a dress-up, make-believe game the Legal profession has become.
The lifetime appointments are designed to put them outside of the scope of politicians and the need to run for re-election. I guess you could serve a single 15 year term with no option to rejoin the court.
> zero accountability
Supreme Court justices can be impeached and removed from office.
yes, by design and it should remain so..
This idea that democracy is the end all be all is false and dangerous, very dangerous. Mob rule is never the solution to anything (as we are seeing with the massive mobs in support of terrorist organization Hamas)
There are all kinds of checks built into the American REPUBLIC that are undemocratic purposefully to prevent the whims of the mob for ruling.
Personally I would like to remove many of the "democratic" processes we have put in place since the founding, namely the election of senators by popular vote, The senate should be returned to be appointed by State Legislators.
If you want to reform the Court system end Stare decisis and make the court rule on the constitutionally of each case on their merits based on the actual words of the Constitution as was their original charge and their constitutional mandate
>Many of those stories focused on Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel and other financial ties with wealthy conservative donors including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. But Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor also have been under scrutiny.
The fact that people are only calling out one person seems very telling to me. This problem is far deeper than one guy or one side.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/scotus-justices-rac...
Of course, that’s assuming you’re not one of the people who believes that he truly thought a trip on a private plane does not need to be disclosed because the seat would have otherwise been taken by someone else so it wasn’t actually a benefit.
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/21/alito-propublica-alaska-fis...
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/scotus-justices-rac...
Clarence Thomas did not.
Also, as far as I can tell it looks like Thomas may have disclosed some of his trips. I'm not clear on that though. It is not clear how many trips the other justices took and didn't disclose.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/scotus-justices-rac...
But I think all the justices can see what Thomas was doing was pretty awful and I doubt any of the other justices, even those whose views I find abhorrent, would have gone that far.
And we’re only talking about justices’ actions themselves. This ethics code very clearly brings in consideration of the judge’s spouse’s activities as well, something which, once again is a major problem with Thomas, and none of the other judges as far as I can tell.
I'm not sure that is the case. Ginsburg got a trip from a person and then the court declined to take up a case against said person.[1] The whole article is quite good so I would recommend reading the whole thing.
>This ethics code very clearly brings in consideration of the judge’s spouse’s activities as well, something which, once again is a major problem with Thomas, and none of the other judges as far as I can tell.
If his wife had wanted to give a speech and Thomas told her no, how many articles would there have been about the mean, misogynist, conservative man controlling his wife? It was a lose lose for Thomas on this so long as his wife wanted to do it.
I think this is on his wife, not him. Justice Breyer defended Thomas on this [2] as well.
There are examples of other justices' spouses doing similar things. Roberts' wife for example [3]. I'm sure there are more cases as well.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/scotus-justices-rac...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/stephen-breyer-defends-ginni-thomas...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/john-roberts-jane-sull...
I also fail to see how a "code of conduct" might change the way individual justices interpret the current constitution.
Worse yet, who is writing the code of ethics? Is it going to be a constitution v2? Constitution-lite?
> The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
Which is actually more nuanced than just "you can ignore the supreme court whenever." Instead, it's articulating the idea that the SC has to be balanced with congress and elected officials. The idea that the SC is the sole arbiter of constitutional meaning grates against the democratically elected power of congress and the executive. An SC that constantly rejects congress risks overstepping and delegitimizing it's very power and role. For instance, congress might simply ignore a ruling, or strip its jurisdiction over certain matters, or it might change the size of the court. This of course could equally backfire on congress and the president. It's, as always, a balancing act of checks and balances rather than just the SC always getting what they want. Constitutional supremacy then is more like the argument that sometimes the judiciary has to be saved from itself.
The debate has a fascinating history in American politics.
I think this simply tries to address the fact that some of the justices have been ridiculously corrupt.
I mean, think about it, irrespective of your political leanings, you’re a judge whose basically forgone the much greater sums of money they could have made going into private service, in return for the comfort of a lifetime appointment, respect from the vast majority of people, and an effort to serve the country.
And there’s this 1 colleague of yours whose wife is raking in money from people whose cases you’re hearing, and is going on paid vacations with billionaires, and his mom is getting her house essentially gifted by another billionaire, etc.
You’d be pissed st this guy even if he was on “your side”. Just on a personal level it must be infuriating for the other 8 justices.
this assumes that the practice is not common, the fact remains that most of these "violations" have been known for years and years, but it politically advantageous to go after this justice at this time.
It is all political, not some altruistic sense of ethics, Biden has been after Thomas since his confirmation
They may as well fine them $50 every time they accept a bribe.
Term limits would go much, much further and you'll notice the absence.
It's pretty clear the founders wanted some magic box to tell everyone how the laws applied in a given situation, and designed the rest of the system around that. They attempted to create that with the Judicial branch. It's clear from the lack of term limits that they thought the Justices would be apolitical. However, there is no mechanism forcing the justices to interpret the laws in the simplest, most literal way. Instead we have increasingly stretched interpretations used to affect political change sans representative legislature.
My biggest fear is that the American public is going to look at this and say to themselves "oh look, they fixed the problem!"