The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Thursday on a new ethics code for the Supreme Court, an attempt to respond to recent revelations about justices’ interactions with wealthy donors and others. Republicans are strongly opposed, arguing the ethics bill could “destroy” the high court.
A good first step, but we need more than a code update when they’re ignoring the code as it currently exists. We need an independent non-partisan office that can and will enforce it, and ideally has the capacity to bring criminal charges to justices in violation.
" ignoring the code as it currently exists."
I thought the issue was they aren’t covered under those laws.
Yep, exactly. There’s an ethics code that Roberts recently published that was a rehash of the non-binding ethics standards that both Thomas and Alioto regularly ignored. This is an update to that code with more oversight in the form of additional required disclosures, but (correct me if I’m wrong - please, I want to be wrong here) I’m not seeing anything about enforcement, or anything about the consequences to a justice for violating these new requirements.
Any non partisan approach will be treated as partisan by the right. I don’t want violence to be the solution to the US issues but it gets harder every day to see any other effective solution.