Why are the liberal justices quiet on the Supreme Court ethics scandal?
Tell me, why are the liberal justices on the Supreme Court closing their eyes to reports of corruption among conservative justices? Is it peer pressure among people with lifetime appointments?
Do the liberals fear future reporting on deals that put money in their pockets?
Are they scared? Already Justice Sonia Sotomayor is being targeted by a conservative website for not recusing herself from a case involving her book publisher.
Is there is a code of silence compelling the liberal justices to ignore calls for the court to adopt strong rules on financial transactions — including oversight and penalties for violations of trust?
I don’t have the answers.
But for some reason, Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson are helping to shut the door on having every justice abide by rules of ethical conduct.
Last week the liberal justices put their names next to the conservative justices and endorsed the court’s current guidelines on “Ethics Principles and Practices.”
Those weak rules have failed to restrain the flow of favors to conservative justices in the form of gifts, payments to spouses, vacation travel and real estate deals.
By endorsing those vapid rules, the liberal justices abandoned their responsibility to defend the court’s credibility in the face of reports of financial wrongdoing by conservative justices.
They are ignoring evidence of powerful, wealthy patrons offering financial favors that tie justices into social networks that prevent them from hearing from a range of political voices.
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this column that the allegations of financial impropriety around a man I have long known, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, were too grave to ignore because they threatened the high court’s credibility.
There is no way for anyone with clear eyes to dismiss news reports that Justice Thomas failed to report free vacations worth millions of dollars from a rich Republican donor. The same millionaire also paid for the house where Thomas’s mother lives. And he paid school tuition for a Thomas relative.
Justice Thomas’s wife also got money through a plan directed by conservative legal powerbroker Leonard Leo, who reportedly asked that her name not be listed while she was given payments as a consultant.
Now there are questions about money flowing to Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Business Insider reported last week that the chief justice failed to disclose that his wife was paid more than $10 million in commissions over an eight-year period as a head-hunter for elite law firms and corporations — including some that had cases and interests before his court.
“It’s corruption, plain and simple.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted.
At his Senate confirmation hearing in 2005, Roberts likened himself to an umpire in a baseball game. “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat,” he said.
Well, Mr. Chief Justice, to use your own analogy, what are people supposed to think when the umpire’s wife is getting paid $10 million by the fan of one team?
Politico reported that nine days – yes, nine days – after he was sworn in, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sold the property he owned in Colorado to the chief executive of an elite law firm with business before the court.
Gorsuch reportedly had been unable to unload the property for years. But once he was on the court, a buyer suddenly appeared.
These stories are much bigger than any “misconception” addressed in the statement signed by all the justices.
That’s why the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said: “Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the court participates in the process or not.”
Durbin is right. The court can longer be trusted to abide voluntarily by an honor system. Their actions reveal their lack of judgment.
“The court has closed itself up like a turtle, pretending this is all okay,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). He has proposed legislation to establish new rules for disclosure and recusal.
The statement endorsed by all the justices reveals that the whole group can’t “see what a big problem they have with the lack of accountability,” Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at St. Louis’ Washington University, told the AP. They all “seem to be utterly clueless about the problem they have…they’re in a bubble apparently,” she added.
The justices are forgetting that the Supreme Court’s power is based on the trust from citizens, on the political left and right, rich and poor.
The court’s public approval rating has dipped after a series of highly political decisions by the court’s conservative majority — deciding the 2000 presidential election, weakening gun control laws and most recently ending constitutional protection for abortion.
But this isn’t about disagreeing with a justice’s ruling. This is about whether anyone on the court has betrayed their oath to the Constitution for financial gain.
“The smell of financial corruption around Thomas is now stronger than the longstanding fear that his votes on the high court are dictated by his hatred of the liberals who put him through painful nomination hearing,” I wrote last month about Justice Thomas.
Something must be done to restore the public’s trust. That is not hyperbole.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.