Washington
In an unexpected move, the US Supreme Court published this Monday (13) a code of conduct intended to guide the actions of its members. The move is a response to growing pressure facing judges after reports earlier this year revealed that influential conservative names had paid for gifts and trips to members of the court.
Until now, judges at the highest levels of the American judiciary have been the only members of the judiciary not subject to this type of regulation.
The document, nine pages long and divided into five canons, is signed by the nine justices of the Supreme Court. In a brief paragraph explaining the decision to formalize the code, the group explains that the goal is to concentrate “ethics standards and principles” in a single location, most of which are already known and from other documents and judicial practices are derived.
“However, the lack of a code has in recent years led to the false understanding that the judges of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, consider themselves unfettered with respect to any ethical standards,” they admit in the text. “To clear up this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which is largely a codification of the principles that we have long considered to guide our conduct.”
However, the document does not explain how these rules will be monitored or how violations will be punished it is understood that it will be up to the Supreme Court justices themselves to ensure that the principles are adhered to, which has already drawn criticism from Experts in the USA.
“The court’s new code of conduct does not appear to contain any meaningful enforcement mechanism to hold judges accountable for any violations of the code,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday afternoon.
The disclosure of gifts and travel, particularly from conservatives, prompted the Democratled Senate committee to push for the creation of a code of ethics.
The discussion about implementing standards of this kind is not new, but has gained strength this year after ProPublica published a report in April that revealed luxury trips on private jets and yachts conducted by Justice Clarence Thomas and by conservative tycoon Harlan Crow was from Texas a major donor to the Republican Party.
The publication had a great response in the US and was followed by several further investigations of other vehicles, showing other benefits Thomas gained in his relationship with private agents, such as purchasing a luxury motorhome and paying private school tuition for one trusted.
In his defense, the judge states that he did not disclose the gifts and trips because there was no obligation that would have required him to do so.
In addition to the material benefits, Thomas was also criticized for not recusing himself from cases involving the Jan. 6, 2020 attacks on the Capitol the judge’s wife, Virginia, is a conservative activist who supported the former President Donald Trump supported his claims without providing any evidence that the election was rigged.
Thomas is the most famous case, but he is not the only one. In 2008, Justice Samuel Alito went on a fishing trip to Alaska accompanied by billionaire Paul Singer whose private jet took the judge there. Another participant on the trip was the conservative activist Leonard Leo.
In subsequent years, several cases involving Singer, including a dispute with Argentina, were considered by the Supreme Court. Even before the case was uncovered by ProPublica, Alito wrote an article published in the Wall Street Journal defending himself against the criticism using the same argument as Thomas he was under no obligation to disclose the trip.
It was also revealed that Neil Gorsuch failed to disclose that a home he coowned was sold to the head of a major law firm. In July, it was Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s turn after the Associated Press published a report that revealed the involvement of court employees in selling the judge’s books.
In light of the series of revelations, other judges on the court had signaled their willingness to adopt standards to guide judicial conduct. After Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett was the youngest person to speak out publicly on this issue. Last month she said a formal code would be a “good idea”.