Rep. Chris Murphy Announces Bill To End Supreme Court Immunity To Judicial Ethics Law

[ensho]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/18/no-scotus-immunity/


The Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that in almost all circumstances, “a judge should not personally participate in fund-raising activities.” Yet, because the Justices of the Supreme Court have exempted themselves from this Code, conservative Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito have all participated in high-dollar fundraisers for right-wing political causes. In response to this unethical — but technically legal — conduct by these three justices, Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is pushing a bill that would end the Supreme Court’s immunity to federal ethics law:

After learning about outrageous actions by Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5) is working on legislation to end conflicts of interest at the nation’s highest court. In the midst of the Citizens United case, Thomas and Scalia were hosted by the infamous Koch brothers, who funded many of the attacks ads this fall, at lavish retreats intended to discuss their radical agenda and plot political strategy on issues like the Citizens United case. . . .

Murphy’s bill will:

•apply the Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct, which applies to all other federal judges, to Supreme Court justices. This would allow the public to access more timely and detailed information when an outside group wants to have a justice participate in a conference, such as the funders of the conference;
•require the justices to simply publicly disclose their reasoning behind a recusal when they withdraw from a case;
•require the Court to develop a process for parties to a case before the Court to request a decision from the Court, or a panel of the Court, regarding the potential conflict of interest of a particular Justice.

-snip-

To be fair, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are not Batchelder, Boggs and Clement, so it is entirely possible that they will not treat their obligations with such callous disregard once Congress removes any question that their fundraising activities are illegal. In the meantime, however, Justice Alito has simply dismissed his own profligate right-wing fundraising as “not important.”
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we have to get behind this and make sure it passes.

[myrna minx]

1. K&R n/t

[indepat]

2. Murphy's bill will surely fly right through the Republican Congress without

opposition. :patriot:

[Recursion]

3. Eh. There's some separation of powers problems with that

Still, if it brings attention to Thomas's (and others') abuses, go for it.

[Bandit]

4. Couldn't the Extreme Court just rule this unConstitutional?

They have been so blatantly partisan in the recent past, it would not surprise me one bit if they did...