Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are planning to hold a hearing on the “ethical standards” of the Supreme Court in the midst of a major scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas.
The group, led by Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), announced the hearing in a letter sent to Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday, saying that the recent report on Thomas shows behavior “plainly inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any person in a position of public trust.” They added that there is a “need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.”
The Democrats urged Roberts to investigate Thomas’s acceptance of opulent gifts from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, which ProPublica uncovered last week. If the High Court doesn’t resolve the issue, the lawmakers said, they will consider introducing legislation to implement ethical standards instead.
Lawmakers have long sought to ensure that the Supreme Court is bound to a code of ethics. Currently, Supreme Court justices are the only judges who are not legally bound to ethics guidelines, leaving nine of the most powerful people in the U.S. free to break ethics rules with impunity.
Calls for a binding ethics code have increased in the past year amid revelations surrounding the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the alleged leak of another major reproductive rights decision in 2014, regarding Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Both leaks ultimately benefited far right activists, who have close connections to conservative justices, and who have sought to erode reproductive rights for decades.
The lawmakers pointed out that Roberts in particular has a history of snubbing the suggestion that Supreme Court justices be bound to an ethics code. They brought up a 2011 report prepared by the Court that found that “the Court has had no reason to adopt the Code of Conduct as its definitive source of ethical guidance,” after lawmakers had similarly pushed the Court to adopt a binding ethics code more than a decade ago.
Crow’s relationship with Thomas and other ethical concerns surrounding Thomas were known even back then, the lawmakers wrote.
The New York Times noted in its coverage of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the Supreme Court’s code of conduct in 2011 that “Questions have been raised over Justice Clarence Thomas’s appearances before Republican-backed groups and his acceptance of favors from a contributor in Texas, Harlan Crow, as well as over his wife, Virginia Thomas, and her job as a conservative advocate.”
The lawmakers raised concern over the evident failure by Roberts, who has been chief justice since 2005, in recognizing the need for a binding ethics code for over a decade.
“It is troubling that your 2011 year-end report, which dismissed the call for the Justices to adopt the Code of Conduct, was written notwithstanding the known concerns about Mr. Crow’s largesse. This problem could have been resolved then,” the Democrats said. “Instead, according to ProPublica’s reporting, Mr. Crow’s dispensation of favors escalated in secret during the years that followed. Now the Court faces a crisis of public confidence in its ethical standards that must be addressed.”
The letter comes amid an explosion of calls for action surrounding Thomas and the Supreme Court. Some lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), have called for Thomas to be impeached over the revelations, while lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) say that legislation forcing the Supreme Court to be bound to an ethics code is long overdue.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.