Supreme Court Ethics Crisis - Supreme Court Justices Offer Unconvincing Dodge on Ethics

[ck4829]

Tuesday’s U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” quickly broke down along partisan lines. Democrats pointedly argued that declining public confidence in the Court was in part due to the justices’ refusal to adopt written ethics rules, such as the lower federal courts’ Code of Conduct for United States Judges and comparable codes in every state. Republicans angrily countered that the hearing was just one more episode in a decades-long smear of conservative justices. Each side produced witnesses to back up its position, but the most important witnesses, it turns out, were not in the room.

Two letters to the committee set out the issues as sharply as the testifying witnesses, without an overlay of partisanship. The sitting justices made the case for the status quo, while a prominent former judge focused on the need for formal ethical transparency.

Chief Justice John Roberts had politely declined an invitation from the committee chair, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), to appear in person or designate another justice to testify. Along with his own letter, invoking the separation of powers and judicial independence, Roberts attached a Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices, signed by all nine justices, conservatives and liberals alike, explaining how they currently address certain “recurring” ethics issues in the absence of a formal code.

On the eve of the hearing, former federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig, a widely respected conservative, provided his own letter to the committee, explaining the Supreme Court’s obligation to assure the public, “in every way both necessary and possible,” that there is no reason “to question the ethical conduct” of the justices. “There should never come a day,” Luttig added, when Congress “is obligated to enact laws prescribing the ethical standards” applicable to the Court. But Congress “indisputably has the power under the Constitution to do so,” he concluded.

https://prospect.org/justice/2023-05-04-supreme-court-justices-dodge-ethics/

[The Magistrate]

1. People Objecting To An Enforcible Code Of Ethics Show Us Two Things

First, that they conduct themselves at present as grifting sharpsters willing to sell anything from a judicial decision to an unwilling daughter.

Second, that they are persons of such character as ought never to be allowed near a position in which they could violate an ethics code.

[Sneederbunk]

5. Third, that they are political hacks.

[Jerry2144]

2. there is no ethics crisis

when people and organizations have no ethics or ethical requirements

[Dustlawyer]

3. Wonder how the conservative politicians would feel if George Soros started paying

the mortgages of the liberal SCOTUS members and letting them stay on his yacht?

[Baitball Blogger]

4. They need a code of ethics because our Supreme Court justices are being bought,

and not just bought, they're part of a cult with an agenda to undermine the objectivity that ensures freedoms for all of us.

Right now, their integrity is in the shitter.