>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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!"
Readit News
>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…
>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.
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.
Dead Comment
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 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 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?
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
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!"
So, probably not in our lifetimes