Courts

Chief Justice Roberts Has The Opportunity To Do Something Extremely Funny About Judicial Ethics

Don't buy the bait and switch — we all know who we should be hearing from.

By Chris Williams on April 21, 2023 2:47 pm
Supreme Court Holds Investiture Ceremony For Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

(Photo by Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)

One important thing about the Supreme Court has been in the news cycles lately. No, not the late Justice Scalia’s history of totally not* taking bribes, or Justice Thomas’s history of not* taking bribes, or Supreme Court justices espousing the importance of not being partisan hacks despite their clear indulgence in being partisan hacks. No, I’m referring to the Supreme Court’s general lack of a binding code of ethics that would… y’know, provide enforcement mechanisms for times when things like the aforementioned things happen. The frequency and obvious bullshittery of the justices’ behavior has reached enough of a smoking point that the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking for them to talk about it directly and publicly. From ABA Journal:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify at an upcoming public hearing after media reports raised ethics concerns about Justice Clarence Thomas.

In a letter sent Thursday, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and chairman of the committee, contended that Roberts hasn’t discussed how U.S. Supreme Court justices handle ethical issues since his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. In that report, Roberts said justices “are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”

“Since then, there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally,” Durbin wrote. “These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the court’s decadelong failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable.”

Talk about a good sentence. To start with — he’s right. The Court’s all-time low with regard to legitimacy is proof of that. That aside, the words just flow nicely. State that sentence with a steady cadence and a somber tone and the gravitas of it just flows like so much unreported money going into a judge’s pocket for two decades.

Durbin requested that Roberts or another designated justice appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 2 to address the ethical rules that government Supreme Court justices and potential reforms.

Did you catch that? Roberts can delegate the task. And as nice as it would be to see Justice Jackson or Justice Kavanaugh speak on the Court’s behalf, they’re still pretty new to the bench. No, whomever this task is delegated to should have some tenure on the Court, at least… 32 years or so. You see where I’m going with this? He should choose Clarence Thomas as the one to represent how Supreme Court justices ought to handle ethical conflicts. Because sure, Roberts is the Chief Justice but Thomas has been on the court for 14 years his senior.

One response to this would be that it would be problematic for the Court’s longest-standing “falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges” to be selected as the representative of the Court. To that, I say, that’s the point! Why would you have anyone else but the longest-sitting, most bribery-adjacent and most “should-have-recused-themselves-but-didn’t” give the State 0f the Judicial Union? It will force hands in one of two ways: We will either get the milquetoast “we promise to do better” shtick that Roberts and Co. have been giving for the last few decades (and finally nip whatever remnants of legitimacy the Supreme Court has for itself) or, we can be given a response that is weighted appropriately given the nature of what’s at hand — Clarence Thomas’s Abe Fortas-level recognition of responsibility and resignation at the ethical summit. What else could even approach a full-throated commitment to judicial transparency and re-commitment to the public trust as that? I think Durbin put it best:

“The opportunity for the American people to hear from justices in this setting presents a moment that could strengthen faith in our public institutions,” Durbin wrote. “The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the court’s ethical standards.”

No response that fails to address the elephant in the room that is Chief Justice Roberts’s right-hand man — no seriously, Thomas sits directly to the right of him in all the pictures following the Court’s seniority conventions — has a hope of repairing the public image of the Court. And if someone has to speak, why not hear it directly from the horse’s mouth? Because somebody has to clean up what passes for an ethical justice at this point.

Senate Judiciary Committee Calls On Chief Justice Roberts To Discuss Ethics [ABA Journal]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.