The same U.S. Supreme Court that’s repeatedly ruled that the president of the United States is not above the law considers itself above a simple, enforceable code of ethical conduct. This is not right — which is why the bipartisan bill to require the high court to impose such a code upon itself should become law.
As questions continue to swirl about Justice Clarence Thomas’ failure to disclose his financial entanglements, including multi-million-dollar gifts from a billionaire friend, Chief Justice John Roberts recently responded to Sen. Dick Durbin’s request to testify before the Judiciary Committee with a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices. The words are nice, but they don’t add up to a binding set of rules to which all justices must abide.
All other federal judges, whether at the trial or appeals level, must follow such rules — which, among other things, require them to “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.” If a judge breaches the code, he or she can be investigated and reprimanded. Not The Nine. The Nine keep their fingers on the scales of justice they purport to revere.
We believe in the separation of powers, an ingenious feature of the constitutional system James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and the rest designed. But Congress is not here meddling in the internal workings of the judiciary; it is simply requiring that the court, on its own, adopt a code and have an individual handle complaints about violations. The whole thing is a measly three pages long.
Confidence in the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority last summer overturned Roe v. Wade and eviscerated a century-old New York gun safety law, is lower than it’s ever been; just 25% of those polled by Gallup say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the highest bench in the land.
Without legitimacy, rulings will lose their force and the republic will drift ever further apart. Require a code under law. What will the justices do, sue Congress?
