Is it unclear? It seems clear to me. The Justices agree these are the "rules and principles." That's it.
November 13, 2023
"The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it had issued an ethics code for the justices...."
"In a statement by the court, the justices said they had adopted the 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.'
'For the most part these rules and principles are not new,' the court said, adding that '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.' Left unclear was how the code will be enforced."
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The new ethics code will be enforced by a panel of journalists from the NYT and WaPo. Everyone respects the ethics of journalists.
Seriously, I'd defer to a panel of lawyers from Nebraska.
Whichever rules they decide upon— who is going to enforce those rules and how?
As it currently stands — every lawyer that argues before SCOTUS should now ask opposing counsel if they or their firm has any financial ties to any of the justices.
This will never please the left. Not submissive enough.
They didn't regard themselves unrestricted. (And the NYT wouldn't describe it that way if the press were hounding Sotomayor.) They just had different parameters. That's why you write a formal rule.
A fine step forward, except for those who want to put a boot on the Justices' necks.
Of course we'll never look too hard at the "good" justices.
When Senator Durbin sorrowfully says that this is just not good enough, remember that he rose through the IL Dem party, where leverage is all. John Kass has an interesting column on what he had to do to get rid of the leverage that Ald. Ed Burke had on him.
Durbin just wants to know a secret about you, or a mistake , or a lie that you told.
"The new ethics code will be enforced by a panel of journalists from the NYT and WaPo. Everyone respects the ethics of journalists."
Yes, plus the disembodied voice of Nina Totenberg reminiscing about her many confidential conversations with "RUTH". That will go on for twenty years after Nina joins Ruth in the great beyond.
Last week, I was listening to a college professor giving a lecture to a class, and he said - if he got 10 students together to come up with a new way to grade the class - he guarantees they would come up with some way that all 10 of those students would pass.
This would be Exhibit A of his theory in action.
...maybe if they break it someone will decide that their Behaviour is not Good...
Don't leak stuff. A few of them thought it was okay to leak stuff. Don't leak stuff...
"The walls are closing in on Justice Thomas."
3, 2, 1 ....
Rich said...
“As it currently stands — every lawyer that argues before SCOTUS should now ask opposing counsel if they or their firm has any financial ties to any of the justices.”
And ask them their personal pronouns, too.
There are personal ethics, but when you are dealing with SCOTUS, there is only one ethics board and adjudicator- Congress. That's it. Roberts, of course, is trying to appease the left, but he is extremely foolish here. The media are only attacking people like Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett because it is battlefield prep for their real goal- adding 3-5 newly appointed leftists to the court in a court-packing operation.
Roberts should have told Durbin etal. to fuck right off.
So when do these go into effect? Are they back dated?
I suspect the concern on enforcement comes down to the NYT understanding of ethics and principles. What exactly do those words mean to the NYT? What are their ethics and principles? How are they enforced?
In other news, the NYT is accused of using a freelance photographer that had prior knowledge of the Oct. 7 attack on Hamas, as they seem embedded with the Hamas attackers. NYT claims "no evidence" to support this despite photographic evidence.
Who leaked Dobbs?
I'm sure they know.
We pay for the building and the security.
Should be public information...
I thought there was already a judicial code. They just skipped it?
Noice.
Thank God. They wanted to be ethical but didn't have a code!
Rich said...
“As it currently stands — every lawyer that argues before SCOTUS should now ask opposing counsel if they or their firm has any financial ties to any of the justices.”
That line of questioning would not implicate Justice Thomas. Who borrowed money from a rich friend to buy an RV, a portion of which loan was later forgiven. And, still later, the friend's company's subsidiary successfully defended a claim of copyright infringement, and the plaintiff petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari but the Court (voting anonymously as is, I believe, its won't) denied the petition. I believe we don't know if Justice Thomas (or anyone else at the Court) knew of that remote and indirect interest that might possibly have been in play if cert had been granted; nor do we know how Justice Thomas (or anyone else at the Court) voted on the cert petition.
What kind of code of conduct would cast a net wide enough to pick up such tenuous wisps of possible bias? You can be sure that the Thomas-haters are hard at work parsing the code and stretching its fabric to absurd limits.
Pass the popcorn.
Chicago/Cook County/Springfield Illinois Judges???
Ethics?hahaha
Rich. You seem angry that the Supreme Court isn't answerable to you or your party.
Left unclear was how the code will be enforced
The answer has been crystal-clear for more than 200 years: Impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. A reasonably bright high-school student could have told you that.
If any of the justices disagree, I suppose they could take it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
NYT:
In a statement, the justices said they had established the 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.” Left unclear was how the rules would be enforced or by whom.
Maybe we should apply any new rules retroactively: What influences were applied to the Justices who decided Brown v Board? If at least 5 Justices were influenced, should we invalidate the decision? Put the "coloreds" back in segregated schools?
When do we get to apply some of these rules to, say, President Biden's real estate deals, like the one with the DuPont family? I'm all for transparency - as long as the glass is level.
They say "misunderstanding" with a solemn straight face. Do you suppose that makes Thomas and Alito feel better?
"Is it unclear? It seems clear to me. The Justices agree these are the "rules and principles." That's it."
And if you don't like them, they got others.
‘“Left unclear was how the code will be enforced.” … Is it unclear? It seems clear to me. The Justices agree these are the "rules and principles." That's it.’
Is that it? As the Justices have defined what constitutes good behavior in this code of conduct, then a violation of the code of conduct could end a Justice’s term of office, as under the Constitution the Justices hold their offices not for life but “during good behavior”. The enforcement still falls to impeachment by the House and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate. Compliance with the code of conduct would certainly be offered as an impeachment defense.
While the code of conduct addresses the misuse of nonpublic information in the context of financial activities, there is nothing about holding draft or final opinions confidential until the official announcement of the decision. So leaking is allowed?
Merrick Garland will be the self appointed enforcer.
Him and his cruel neutrality.
NPR noted that the new ethics guidelines - not so much a set of rules or regulations or tripwires or booby traps or laws or absolute no-nos - included familial financial activities, with spouses and children and even grandchildren mentioned. So that means we'll never have a Biden on the Supreme Court, which is something good coming out of all this.
"Left unclear was how the code will be enforced."
Why, the same way Mike Johnson and his adolescent son are checking each other's porn habits (to ensure they don't look!).
There is an enforcement mechanism already in place. It's impeachment. If a justice is grossly unethical, the Congress can impeach him and remove him from office. The Congress was ready to do that to Justice Arthur Goldberg but he resigned instead. The Democrats don't like this mechanism for two reasons. One, they would prefer to outsource punishment and recusal decisions to unelected bureaucrats or lower court judges so that the members of Congress don't have to take any political heat for removing a justice. Two, they don't have the votes to impeach Thomas or Alito because their alleged transgressions just don't seem that severe to the general public. Yes, Democratic partisans are up in arms in response to the ongoing propaganda campaign from Senator Whitehouse and his ally, Pro-Publica, but to impeach they need much broader support and they don't have that. So the Democrats want to empower decision makers who don't need broad public support to act.
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