Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently sent a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asking that he or another Justice come to the Senate and testify at an ethics hearing. This no doubt has something to do with the questions surrounding Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and certain gifts he allegedly received from a friend of his family. There have been calls for a new code of ethics for the Supreme Court so that probably would have come up as well. Whatever it was that Durbin hoped to accomplish, we’ll likely never find out because Roberts wrote back declining the invitation, citing the rare and inappropriate nature of the request. (OANN)
Roberts, or another delegated justice, had been requested to testify before the committee to address questions on the rules of the bench by Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate Majority whip and chair of the Judiciary subcommittee.
For the chief justice of the United States to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to Roberts, is “exceedingly rare,” a precedent that is essential for maintaining the separation of powers and judicial independence.
All presiding justices are required to abide by the High Court’s Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices, which he also attached.
The Democrats are up in arms, supposedly over Clarence Thomas accepting gifts from Harlan Crow. I suppose there are some valid questions about how much the justices should be disclosing, particularly if they are dealing with people who are directly connected to cases that may come before the court.
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But along with his response to Durbin, Roberts included a copy of the court’s Statement of Ethics, Principles, and Practices signed by all nine justices. That seemed to be a not-terribly-subtle message to Durbin reminding him that the Supreme Court is a coequal ruler under the Constitution, along with Congress and the President. The oversight role of Congress applies much more to the Executive branch than the Judicial.
Roberts also pointed out how “exceedingly rare” it is for any justice, to say nothing of the Chief Justice, to be summoned to the legislature to provide testimony. We have the separation of powers embedded in our founding documents for a reason.
Further, as Josh Blackman pointed out at Reason, even if Congress succeeded in forcing the court to adopt some sort of official code of ethics, those would not be “laws” or any sort of binding measure. The Justices would still have to follow their own consciences when deciding matters of ethics. There have been plenty of cases heard by the court where some of the justices (appointed by presidents of both parties) had things in their backgrounds that might suggest recusal would be in order. But recusals at the Supreme Court remain rare. One study found that since 2018, only 3% of cases heard by the court saw one or more justice recuse themselves.
Of course, what’s really going on here is that the Democrats don’t like the way Clarence Thomas votes and they’re looking for a way to get him off the court. Some have openly speculated about impeaching him. Good luck with that, gang. It’s never worked in the nation’s history and it’s not going to work now.
