"Peak gaslighting": Legal scholars shred Supreme Court's spin on new "unenforceable" ethics code
"Peak gaslighting": Legal scholars shred Supreme Court's spin on new "unenforceable" ethics code
My first reaction when I saw it was that it appears to be the case that the justices are not only corrupt, but stupid. Or pathological. Or both.
It's not just that it's unenforceable - even though it's unenforceable, it also goes out of its way to be weak and mealy-mouthed. They couldn't even manage to make any clear statements - it's all vaguely non-specific gestures that boil down to "we sort of think that justices maybe oughta not do things that might look bad to other people." As if the whole notion of judicial ethics is so far outside of their awareness that they not only can't impose any, but can't even manage to put together a passable pretense.
Presumably it was supposed to help - to make it look as if they do actually have some ethics. And it resoundingly failed.
What it did for me was move me from reasonably sure that at least some of them are corrupt to dead certain that they all are, and not only corrupt but so grossly corrupt that they don't even know how to pretend otherwise.
“the absence of a code 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."
Who has misunderstood this? Oh, the justices of the Supreme Court themselves did. Good they remind themselves now, that they are restricted by ethics rules. Sad that they had to be reminded of it. Even more sad, that they can't specify the ethics rules, because if they would they immediately would call out the ones who did clearly not follow them. That also does not speak for them, because it means the ones who did not follow ethics rules in fact are still unrestricted by them.
This is worse than ignoring the problem. It is admitting that they were and are the problem and admitting they were and are unwilling to do something against it. Well done. This will be teaching material for everyone in the justice system for years to come.
Technically, a judge or justice can be impeached and/or removed, but I get what you mean
I want to see how Fox news is covering this story. If they can convince half the country that the Supreme Court is an upstanding institution, then it will have been worth the farce.
Faux News will cover it like this
They’re just guidelines. . .
Classic “we have investigated ourselves, and admit to no evidence of wrongdoing”
Close, but they didn't even claim to investigate themselves. They just created a document of theoretical standards they pinky swear they will follow in the future but that they claim no one has the power to actually judge them by.
Anyways they're wrong, congress has the power to regulate the supreme court, including removing justices. Good luck finding a 2/3rd vote for that though.
Psh, SCOTUS has already determined that the Congress does not have the power. Clearly, when the framers of the Constitution wrote in all those clauses about oversight, the framers didn't actual mean that. /s