‘An ethical crisis of its own making’: Democrats blast Supreme Court ethics

A report from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee has detailed new allegations about the “lavish gifts” justices on the United States Supreme Court received from donors.

The 93-page report, released on Saturday, culminates a nearly 20-month investigation led by outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin.

Prominent Senate Democrats like Durbin have long pushed for the Supreme Court to institute a watertight code of ethics to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure compliance with disclosure mandates.

In their report, the Democrats slammed the Supreme Court’s chief justice, conservative John Roberts, for not taking more forceful steps to crack down on the apparent ethical lapses.

“Chief Justice Roberts’s continued unwillingness to implement the only viable solution to the Court’s ethical crisis — an enforceable code of conduct — requires Congress to act to restore the public’s confidence in the highest court in the land,” the report said.

It accused the court of failing to deal with “an ethical crisis of its own making”.

In the wake of ProPublica’s investigation, Roberts did take steps to implement a Supreme Court code of ethics.

The court never had such a code before. But critics pointed out that the new code, agreed to unanimously by the justices in November 2023, included no means of enforcing its tenets or investigating possible violations.

That has led to further public outcry. The polling firm Gallup reported on December 17 that confidence in the US judicial system had sunk to a record low, making it an outlier from other relatively wealthy countries.

Gallup found that 55 percent of residents of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expressed confidence in their courts, as a median.

In the US, however, that number was only 35 percent.

Saturday’s report is likely to contribute to that scepticism. The report itself acknowledges the crisis of public faith.

“The public is now far more aware of the extent of the largesse certain justices have received and how these justices and their billionaire benefactors continue to act with impunity,” it said.

The report specifies that “justices appointed by presidents of both parties” have engaged in ethically dubious behaviour. It criticises left-leaning Justice Sonia Sotomayor for initially failing to disclose travel and lodging from the University of Rhode Island while on a book tour.

However, the report reserves some of its most scathing criticism for Justice Thomas and his conservative colleagues, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia.

Many of the incidents have been detailed elsewhere before. For instance, the report points out that Justice Thomas has failed to recuse himself in cases where his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, had a stake in the outcome. The report asserts that this constitutes a violation of federal law.

ProPublica had previously chronicled Thomas’s trips on board Crow’s yacht and private jet, potentially worth thousands of dollars. But Saturday’s report also highlights two newly-revealed trips in October 2021 to Saranac, New York, and to New York City.

In previous public statements, Thomas has maintained he “always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines”. He has also characterised his outings with Crow as “family trips” made with some of his “dearest friends”.