All summer, Democrats were pressuring the Supreme Court to come up with an ethics code that would be enforced.
This was all in response to a ProPublica hit piece on Justice Clarence Thomas.
Well, the court just released its new code of conduct, handing Democrats the win they wanted.
Giving In
The court has always followed the same standards as lower courts, only there was no “official” code of conduct for the Supreme Court.
The ProPublica piece focused on Thomas, but it decided to look away from the conduct of other justices, such as Ginsburg, who once accepted a trip from a business owner who had won a decision on the court.
Justice Breyer had also taken a significant number of trips from donors, but that was never discussed.
This was an effort to either have Thomas retire or back the idea that some Dems were pushing to add members to the court while a Democrat was in office to tilt the court in the other direction.
So, Chief Justice Roberts adopted the code to try to calm things down.
Along with the new code of conduct, the court released the following statement:
“The undersigned justices are promulgating this Code of Conduct to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the Members of the Court.”
The statement went on to say that these rules were not new rules, but now they are officially binding for all court members.
All nine justices signed off on the new code of conduct.
While some Democrats accepted this a “step in the right direction,” others were livid that the new code did not authorize an enforcement body.
For instance, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) stated, “This is a long-overdue step by the justices, but a code of ethics is not binding unless there is a mechanism to investigate possible violations and enforce the rules.”
Source: NBC News
