Top Legal Scholars Say Clarence Thomas Must Recuse Himself After Wife Implicated In Coup Plot

[applegrove]

BY JASON EASLEY at PoliticusUSA

Top Legal Scholars Say Clarence Thomas Must Recuse Himself After Wife Implicated In Coup Plot

https://www.politicususa.com/2022/03/25/top-legal-scholars-say-clarence-thomas-must-recuse-himself-after-wife-implicated-in-coup-plot.html

"SNIP.......

Top U.S. legal scholars say that Justice Clarence Thomas must recuse himself from any case involving the 2020 election after texts implicated his wife in the Trump coup plot.

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker talked to some top legal scholars and reported:

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at N.Y.U. and a prominent judicial ethicist, described the revelations as “a game-changer.” In the past, he explained, he had supported the notion that a Justice and his spouse could pursue their interests in autonomous spheres.

“For that reason, I was prepared to, and did tolerate a great deal of Ginni’s political activism,” he said. But “Ginni has now crossed a line.” In an e-mail reacting to the texts, Gillers concluded, “Clarence Thomas cannot sit on any matter involving the election, the invasion of the Capitol, or the work of the January 6 Committee.”

Supreme Court Justices are subject to a federal law that requires them to recuse themselves in cases where their spouses have an interest that could cause the impartiality of the Justice to be questioned.

.......SNIP"

[Tetrachloride]

1. Recuse ? how about resign.

[2naSalit]

3. Yeah, no shit!

Stop being nice to these criminals! They are trying to kill us!

Hillary was right all along...

[enough]

2. In this case, "must" means nothing but a wish. NT

[Xoan]

4. Pitifully weak journalism.

One legal scholar does not make it plural.

[applegrove]

6. If you go to the actual Jane Mayer article she lists 3 more

experts:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/legal-scholars-are-shocked-by-ginni-thomass-stop-the-steal-texts

"SNIP......

When I spoke with Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, he also made note of the federal statute requiring Justices to recuse themselves if a spouse has “an interest” in a proceeding’s outcome. It’s unclear whether any of Ginni Thomas’s scheming was described in the papers that Trump attempted to withhold from investigators. But, Vladeck told me, “if any of her stuff was in the Trump docs, she sure had an interest,” and this would make Justice Thomas’s dissent unethical.

In an e-mail, Bruce Green, an expert in judicial ethics at Fordham Law School, told me that he agrees with Vladeck: “If Justice Thomas knew that his wife’s e-mails were among the records that would be produced, then surely he should have recused himself, because his wife, although not formally a party, had a very direct personal interest in the case—an interest in avoiding the embarrassment that would result (and now has resulted) from the revelation.”

Richard Hasen, an expert in election law who teaches at the University of California, Irvine, also believes that Justice Thomas should never have participated in the case weighing whether Congress had the right to review Trump’s papers. Hasen told me, “Given Ginni Thomas’s deep involvement in trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election based upon outlandish claims of voter fraud, and her work on this with not only activists but the former President’s chief of staff, Justice Thomas should not have heard any cases” involving disputes over the 2020 election or Congress’s investigation of the January 6th riots. It has now become clear, Hasen said, that “his spouse’s reputation, and even potential liability, is at stake.”

.....SNIP"

[Achilleaze]

5. America cannot afford to keep a Republican traitor

on the Supreme Court.