(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Roberts gaslights America with his top-secret Supreme Court ethics reform [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-05-24
Speaking at the American Law Institute's annual dinner Tuesday evening, John Roberts, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court tacitly admitted that SCOTUS had been skating close to the ethical line. However, anyone expecting him to say that the behavior of the longest-serving Associate Justice, Clarence Thomas, showed the probity of a drunk in a distillery, would have been disappointed at Robert’s equivocation.
The head Justice did venture that he was "committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct." Which, without action, has the same force as the same drunk promising they will not touch another drop.
Then, because talk is cheap, Roberts added,
“We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment, and I am confident that there are ways to do that that are consistent with our status as an independent branch of government under the separation of powers.”
Is Roberts channeling his inner Queen Victoria — or does the “we” include other Justices? if it is the ‘royal we’, Roberts's pronoun choice reflects his unwillingness to take personal ownership of the problem. If ‘we’ encompasses some or all of the other justices, Roberts has effectively delegated the security design of the hen house to the foxes.
A listener would have to question Roberts's commitment to the task. Lawyers love to talk about operative and prefatory clauses and tease meanings, apparent only to them, from poorly written laws. So let us return the favor and parse his sentiment.
Clearly, Roberts’s primary concern is not the Court’s ethics but its right to ruin people's lives without oversight. He has frequently used “separation of powers” as a smoke screen to hide his inaction. The rational observer will ask what that has to do with anything. You can surely design a code of ethics without involving another branch of government. No?
Roberts does not offer any substance to address that. He gives no teeth to his commitment. He offers no concrete steps to restore the luster of the tarnished court. Instead, he wants the audience of lawyers — presumably including some of the Federalist Society’s most doctrinaire jurists — to rest assured that the people, as represented by their elected officials, will continue to pound sand. As the Court acts with the same concern for the average citizen as does the NRA’s Board of Directors.
Roberts did not mention Thomas’s “piss on them” regard for ethics. He left unremarked Gorsuch’s real estate ventures. And he elided over $10 million worth of fees his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, received for her legal headhunting services — often paid by law firms and lawyers that tried cases in front of the Court.
Roberts knows he leads an organization that makes things up as it goes along. When he declined to testify in front of Congress — if you guessed on “separation of powers” grounds, give yourself a pat on the back — he sent a letter to the Senate Judicial Committee. Its second sentence explained his middle finger to the Legislative Branch.
“Testimony by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
He finishes the letter by writing,
“In regards to the court's approach to ethics matters, I attach a statement of Ethics Principles and Practice to which all the current members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”
It is complete bullshit. We have already seen the low regard in which several justices hold ethics. And the statement itself is full of unspecific, unmeasurable, and most importantly, unenforceable codes of conduct. In essence, the Justices signed a piece of paper saying, “I promise to be good. Cross my heart, and hope to die.”
I do not know what the solution is. Perhaps sunlight will be the best disinfectant. Maybe a landslide Presidential victory for the Democrats combined with 60 Senators and a majority in the House will spark reform.
However, the intractable problem is that should Congress pass a SCOTUS ethics law, and the President signs it, what is to stop the Court’s conservative supermajority from simply ruling the law is unconstitutional — and thumbing its nose? A law forcing SCOTUS to behave itself may be unconstitutional. But at this point, with the Court held in such low regard, why would anyone, not a MAGA, believe they were being honest?
The Constitution may deserve reverence for being the world's longest-surviving written charter of government — but it is far from the sublime effort conservatives claim it is. The Dobbs decision overturning Roe proves that the Constitution means whatever the Court’s majority says it means. And Roberts has done nothing to ensure that it does not also mean whatever some rich guy thinks it means.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/24/2171190/-Roberts-gaslights-America-with-his-top-secret-Supreme-Court-ethics-reform
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
