Last October, amid a series of ethics controversies that plagued the Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett admitted it would be a “good idea” if the institution adopted a code of ethics. Judge Elena Kagan made similar comments a month earlier.
The good news for reformers was that the Supreme Court announced in November that it was formally adopting a new code of conduct that included provisions on when justices must recuse themselves and what kinds of outside activities they could engage in. The bad news was that the rules didn’t amount to much.
There was no enforcement mechanism — the judges followed a model in which they were responsible for overseeing themselves — and the rules did not meet the ethical standards that other federal judges are expected to meet. In fact, the new code merely repackaged the judges’ previous statements on ethics and presented them in a new document.
Dissatisfied with the fig leaf, Senate Democrats moved forward with legislation called the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERT Act), which is relatively modest in scope. As NBC News reported, the bill “would give the court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct, allowing the public to file ethics complaints that would then be reviewed by a randomly selected panel of lower court judges . It would also establish new rules for disclosing gifts and travel.”
Senate Republicans objected to such reforms last year, and that opposition has not changed. NBC News reported:
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham promised in advance to derail the measure, and that’s exactly what he did. Although it only took one opponent to object to the unanimous consent request, the South Carolinaian was joined by some of his GOP colleagues, including Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana and Mike Lee of Utah.
The effort came just days after an audio recording intensified ethical questions surrounding Justice Samuel Alito, and less than a week after Judge Clarence Thomas announced luxury trips he accepted from a Republican megadonor.
Yet no one was surprised by the developments in the Senate. Everyone involved in the process has long realized that the legislative prospects for Supreme Court reform are essentially non-existent: to pass a bill through the Senate in the usual way requires sixty votes — a fanciful idea in a room where members of the Republican Party meet. The “moderate” wing is an endangered species — and even if those votes somehow materialized, the Republican-led House would ignore the bill.
But Senate Democrats apparently feel compelled to try to keep the issue alive while helping prove to the public how little Republican lawmakers care about improving the integrity of the Supreme Court.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
