US Supreme Court announces formal ethics code for justices
US Supreme Court announces formal ethics code for justices
This comes after pressure over revelations of undisclosed luxury trips & hobnobbing with wealthy benefactors.
The code contains sections codifying that justices should not allow outside relationships to influence their official conduct or judgment, placing restrictions on justices participating in fundraising and reiterating limits on the accepting of gifts. It also states that justices should not "to any substantial degree" use their judicial resources or staff to engage in non-official activities.
Note that it sounds like this has NOT been officially adopted yet and so far there is no obvious means of enforcement.
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/us/politics/supreme-court-ethics-code.html
Edit: Politco has posted the PDF of the "CODE OF CONDUCT FOR JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES"
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Notably, they did not adopt the same code of ethics that all other federal judges are held to.
From the opening page
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.
So...
- Why, if you think the code that applies to all other federal judges is good, did you not simply adopt it?
- So the problem is that people think the justices consider them not bound by ethics rules because they don't have a formal code, not the behaviors of certain justices that have come to light in recent years, got it.
To me, it feels like this is just written confirmation that they functionally have no code of ethics. They've been dodging the question for months, so I guess this is progress?
And to expect them to make their own code of ethics when they are the ones who've been taking tons of inappropriate gifts and favors seems kind of silly. There should be some kind of independent body writing these rules.
More to the point, there are some perfectly suitable rules that every other federal judge is bound to, we don't need a new set of rules at all.
I mean, aren't they just saying they have to promise bribes aren't impacting their decisions while confirming they can definitely use official resources for unofficial reasons?
Seems like it's just codifying the wrong things.
I think you and I agree, we just phrased the same idea in two different ways