Write Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, in "King Roberts/The chief justice’s latest trick to ward off oversight is the ploy of a royal, not a judge" (Slate).
But the Constitution does insulate the Court from political pressure. It's not complete insulation, but that's why this article is framed as a call for "minimal accountability." The question then is whether what Roberts's refusal to do was in fact only a request for minimal accountability. Senator Dick Durbin asked him testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Court's ethics. Roberts, declining, wrote:
“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
Was Durbin seeking "minimal accountability" or a theatrical occasion to smack the Chief Justice around? Roberts had good reason to suspect the latter.
And speaking of theatrical: that Lithwick and Stern piece in Slate. All this talk of emperors and wielding a scepter!
I remember when that was the rhetoric of the right. Here's Ed Meese in 1997, railing about "The Imperial Judiciary":
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34 comments:
is pebble still around?
Theater. The left demand theater for sound bites.
Teh communists corrupt left fascists will not rest until they destroy our nation.
Dick Durbin as an exemplar of rectitude and honesty? Surely you jest.
I wish Chief Justice Roberts would have gone, and that a senator had asked him to define what a woman is.
"The same justices who feel harassed and exposed because reporters are combing through their undisclosed financial dealings right now could have solved this problem..."
By benign left wing scum, because we never look into them
FIFY, Dahalia
I think the justices are more worried about the mentally unstable who show up at their homes to kill them and their families than reports about their finances.
Their Jan 6 production is pretty much pooping out, so the Democrats need another show trial. "How about we try to discredit the Supreme Court, since it has slipped out of our control?" (Does anyone at all think Schumer has any other goal in mind?
Perhaps we should comb through the reporters undisclosed financial dealings. We can start with Courtney Subramanian.
The Senate Judiciary Committee should smack them around on the judicial ethics issue, that’s what checks and balances are all about. Time to call the people on the other side of these newly disclosed transactions as witnesses. Harlan Crow and Brian Duffy can be subpoenaed.
In terms of ethics legislation, given the concern about whether the Justices would declare themselves Constitutionally exempt, why not also put a filing requirement on the person dealing with a Justice? Brian Duffy says he cleared the purchase with his law firm’s ethics department when he learned Justice Gorsuch was in the transaction. Why not require the lawyer or law firm to file a disclosure statement in that situation?
Well, now that the right finally has a super majority, the right was wrong and the left is now also wrong… but that’s not new. ☺️
Pelosi wielding a scalpel over our Posterity... a hammer... mallet over the People.
Bothsidesism? Possibly one side was right (Meese) and the other side is wrong (Lithwick and Stern).
Notice how this piece simply skips over Roberts point: Congress rarely calls the Chief Justice to testify except on rountine adminstrative matters such as salaries, or the need for the Federal courts to have more money.
How often has Roberts testified before the senate in the last 20 years or so? Very few. Warrne never testified. And Renquist testified so little, Google seach comes up with 1 hit.
So, Congress doesn't need the Chief Justice testimony to do its "oversight". Its just political theater. And Durbin is even more unethical and stupid than Biden. But he Orish, don't ye know.
Lithwick should herself attempt some of that “candor and honest reporting” sometime and show us how it’s done. Start by explaining what she means by plural “justices” in her phrase about reporters “combing through their” (again plural) records. After all except for a brief use of the Chief Justice to illustrate her point we the People have heard about only ONE associate justice who (they assert) didn’t report what was not required earlier.
Dahlia Lithwick and Selective Enforcement on a fashionable topic. What a surprise.
"The same justices who feel harassed and exposed because reporters are combing through their undisclosed financial dealings right now could have solved this problem..."
Yes, if only they had done what we demanded.
Question: How are reporters getting access to 'undisclosed financial dealings'? Am I correct in concluding these are private matters, outside of reporting requirements of office? Who is providing that access, and what is their motivation? They're passing up some really juicy, out-in-the-open, low-hanging fruit by studiously avoiding the Biden family.
Left Bank says, "The Senate Judiciary Committee should smack them around on the judicial ethics issue, that’s what checks and balances are all about."
Incorrect. "Checks and balances" refers to specific features of the Constitution in which one branch can affect the composition of or limit the powers of another branch. Example: Congress can pass legislation but the president can veto it. Or, the president can nominate a justice but the Senate must confirm. "Checks and balances" does not denote simply any action one branch might take to hobble or undermine another branch's actions and authority. If it did, then Congress could send over a mob of people to terrorize the families of SCOTUS justices with whom they disagreed and call that "checks and balances." (I realize that hypothetical is actually quite real.)
Robert's reasons are a bit weak. What about separations of powers between Congress and the Executive? SCOTUS has no problem with government officials testifying before Congress. And Congress has oversight responsibilities over the Court and even the power to change the size of the Court. As for preserving independence, the Justicies simply could refrain from answering questions that may raise such concerns. Much more important is the need for public confidence in the Court. A bit more transparency could help in that regard.
So, all positions of authority and public influence: journalists, congress, senate, executive, non-profits, court/corporate jesters, etc. should offer full disclosure.
This is just more Democrat agitprop. Political lawfare. Which cases did which justice throw because of payoffs? Until we get there, this is a PR stunt.
I am much more concerned that Chief Justice Roberts has not addressed the abuse of the FISA court by a corrupt DoJ.
Multiple incidents have been documented, with zero accountability.
Durban, you dick. The supreme court is not answerable to you. Putz.
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern...
"The same justices who feel harassed and exposed because reporters are combing through their undisclosed financial dealings right now could have solved this problem... with candor and honest reporting of their financial dealings on the routine occasions on which they were asked. In the midst of the crisis, they eschew a commitment to candor to instead mutter something about the nature of checks and balances, with the proviso that they are susceptible to neither. These are the ploys of emperors.... He wields a gavel, not a scepter. And the Constitution grants him no overarching right to insulate his entire court from the kind of minimal accountability without which no democracy can thrive."
Translation: If he had just bent knee to our demands, the flying monkeys would not have come after him.
Sooner or later, someone will find something untoward in the finances of one of the Justices on the left, and this issue will disappear.
What would really be scandalous would be a justice who was besties with and brunched with a prominent reporter on the Supreme Court who worked for a prominent leftie news organization.
Who leaked the Dobbs decision? Why aren't they telling us?
jim1234 is upset that USSC justices are not investigated more closely.
I would like to know if they all know what a woman is.
So. When Roe v. Wade came down, Congress should have called the justices before them and given them a hard time about their personal finances. Because that's what was needed to be done to reverse the unpopular decision that the justices put forth. And if the majority of legislators and their constituents feel that way, that is what the Constitution supports and requires.
Right, Dahlia?
Jimmy numbers--I am no fan of Roberts, but is this what you really want? Congress can haul any justice before them any time the Court makes an unpopular decision? Who draws the line?
I, for one, am glad that RBG, the ACLU's General Counsel and an ACLU Board member, before being a judge, was never ever suspected of having any bias in opinions she wrote and court votes she made. Because of course not.
Who or what is the Supreme Court answerable to? Jimmy?
I really don't care. This isn't about "ethics" at all. This is about control.
Members of both houses of Congress routinely get rich off of insider trading and they don't police themselves whatsoever.
What is obvious is this is a coordinated a political attack on the USSC by the Democrat party and their press lackeys to delegitimize and destabilize the court ahead of any rulings that the fascist Democrats don't like.
"Question: How are reporters getting access to 'undisclosed financial dealings'? Am I correct in concluding these are private matters, outside of reporting requirements of office? Who is providing that access, and what is their motivation? "
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the FBi/DHS or CIA was involved. And I used to be a flag waiving support of those agencies before they showed just how corrupt they are.
Durban the Dick makes it his personal mission to investigate conservative judges while the executive is hiding family financial crimes. Durban is the epitome of a modern Democrat. They lie to your face and tell you to piss off. They don’t even do the hard work of trying to give you a reasonable lie anymore.
The last impediment to Progressive utopia is the SCOTUS; it must be destroyed.
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