The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responding to Associated Press investigative stories about the Supreme Court, said Tuesday it was time for justices to align their conduct with the ethical standards of other branches of government.
“If they just set the basic standards for all the other branches of government, it would give us a lot more confidence in their integrity,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. He was speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he was attending the NATO summit as part of the US delegation.
The AP published stories showing that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has boosted sales of her books through college visits over the past decade; that universities have used judges’ trips as an enticement for financial contributions by placing them in event halls with wealthy donors, and that judges have taken expense-paid teaching trips to attractive venues that are light for actual classroom instruction.
The series comes after stories over the past six months have raised ethical concerns about the judges’ activities. Durbin and other Washington lawmakers have announced a vote next week on legislation that would require the court to adopt an ethics code. While the measure is unlikely to pass, it sends a signal of displeasure by the court.
The nation’s highest court operates without an ethics code, instead following what Chief Justice John Roberts has referred to as a set of fundamental “ethical principles and practices.”
Asked Tuesday about the AP stories, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, called them “powerful reports” that amount to a “drip-by-drip indictment of a Supreme Court. that does not seem to answer to anyone for ethical violations.
“The chief justice should really consider this for the sake of the court and the country because the Supreme Court will cease to exist as a truly viable institution if it continues to not address the need for a code of ethics,” he said. said
Instead, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another member of the Judiciary Committee, said he believes Congress should leave the ethics issue to the court and that Democrats’ pursuit of ethics reform “it’s part of a long-running assault on the court that the left feels is undermining a lot of what they’ve accomplished over the years through judicial action. To me, that’s the driving factor.”
“I think it’s a co-equal branch of government that we don’t have jurisdiction over. Second, I think this is part of a false narrative that the court is out of control and needs Congress to save it,” he said Cornyn.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics, said the latest report reveals the extent to which “the ethics problems at the Supreme Court are an equal opportunity scandal.
“This is not just about Clarence Thomas and (Samuel) Alito,” Clark said, referring to earlier media reports about the two conservative justices. “It’s an institutional problem rather than an individual one.”
_____
Megerian reported from Vilnius, Lithuania. AP writer Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
