One Republican Senator is Backing Supreme Court Reform. Will Any Others Follow?


The need for Supreme Court reform has perhaps never been clearer. But in light of several ethical scandals involving conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, no current Republican elected officials had joined their Democratic colleagues in the call for accountability up until this point. That changed Thursday, when Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced the Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act — legislation that would force the high court to adopt clear ethics rules and appoint an official to process complaints against justices. The bipartisan bill— by her association only— which she introduced with Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, is more limited in scope than the reform Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Hank Johnson re-introduced earlier this year. But it would hold Supreme Court justices to the same ethical standards as other federal judges, and could help begin to “restore the public’s confidence in the integrity and impartiality of our judiciary,” as Murkowski put it Thursday.

“Americans have made clear their concerns with the transparency — or lack thereof — coming from the Supreme Court and its justices,” Murkowski said in a statement. “The Supreme Court must demonstrate independence and fairness as they rule on the laws of the land — and any cracks in the public’s confidence will have damaging repercussions for the state of our democracy.”

The new legislation suggests the bare minimum of bipartisan interest in ushering in common sense reforms at the court. The question is: will other Republicans follow?

Outside of Murkowski and a scattering of former Republican lawmakers like Adam Kinzinger, whose sanity and criticism of Donald Trump have made him a persona non grata within his party, the GOP has brushed off concerns about Thomas, Gorsuch, and the Supreme Court’s ethical standing more broadly. “Unlike the activists and elected Democrats trying to tear them down, the justices have proven their sobriety and judicial temperament over their long and distinguished careers,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a surly speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, describing Thomas and Gorsuch as the victims of a “carousel of character assassination.”

But Thomas and Gorsuch are not being “smeared” by Democrats and watchdogs, as McConnell put it. Thomas failed to disclose years of luxury vacations he enjoyed as part of a friendship with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, who also purchased three properties from the right-wing justice and his family — transactions he did not report, as required by federal law. Gorsuch also benefited from a real estate transaction that he did not fully disclose: As Politico reported earlier this week, he sold a Colorado property — which had been on the market for two years — to the CEO of a law firm that routinely does business with the Supreme Court, days after his confirmation in 2017. Gorsuch included the sale on financial disclosure forms, but did not identify the purchaser: Brian Duffy, whose firm was involved in at least 22 cases before the high court after the sale. 

Crow and Duffy have each denied exerting any influence over the justices, and Chief Justice John Roberts — who turned down an invitation from Dick Durbin to address the scandals at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing next week — has suggested the justices have done nothing to warrant an internal investigation, let alone broader reform. But these are glaring violations of the public trust, which has been plummeting amid the court’s recent parade of scandals and precedent-shattering decisions. They put a spotlight on the unique lack of transparency among these nine unelected, lifetime appointees. 

That unaccountability has been a source of frustration for Democrats and Republicans alike in the past; as recently as two years ago, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham — the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee — joined Whitehouse in calling on Roberts to strengthen the ethical standards for justices. “The Justices of our highest court are subject to the lowest standards of transparency of any senior officials across the federal government,” Whitehouse and Graham wrote to Roberts in a February 2021 letter. “We believe a legislative solution may be in order to bring the judiciary’s financial disclosure requirements in line with other branches of government if the Court does not address the issue itself.” But while Whitehouse has continued the fight — re-introducing the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act in February — Graham has seemingly gone silent on the matter, even after revelations that Thomas apparently capitalized on the very low standards of transparency he once decried. (This is the same Thomas who moved last year to temporarily block a Georgia court from forcing the senator to testify in an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.)

With Graham leading the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, and McConnell leading the conference in the Senate, not to mention the Republican majority in the House, the prospect of broad bipartisan support for reform would seem slim. But the Murkowski-King bill at least gives cause for hope that Congress can exert some oversight authority over the high court and compel it to adhere to common sense ethical standards. Roberts, his fellow justices conservative and liberal alike, and Capitol Hill Republicans have resisted such changes, suggesting they are an attack on the court’s independence. But, as King put it to the New York Times on Thursday, reform is in the best interest of a court that has taken a sledgehammer to its own credibility: “We’re trying,” King said, “to help the court help themselves.”





Source link

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

Start typing and press Enter to search