Cruises on a mega-yacht, questionable real estate transactions… Recent controversies surrounding conservative justices of the Supreme Court of the United States were closely examined on Tuesday by a Senate committee.
Once one of the most respected institutions in the country, the American temple of law – which settles important social debates such as the death penalty or abortion – sees its star fade.
Appointed for life, its nine judges are the only federal judges to escape an explicit code of conduct – an exception examined during a parliamentary hearing.
“The highest judicial body in the land should not have the least stringent ethics rules,” said Dick Durbin, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
largesse
If a parliamentary hearing on the ethics of the Supreme Court is unusual, it is also rare that it is at the heart of so much controversy.
Clarence Thomas, the Court’s most conservative judge, found himself in the storm when the ProPublica media revealed that he had accepted, without declaring them, expensive gifts, including private jet flights or cruises on a mega -yacht, from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow.
Some elected Democrats have called for his “immediate resignation”.
He defended himself by assuring that the rules governing declarations around this type of stays had changed and that Mr. Crow had no pending case before the Supreme Court.
Clarence Thomas isn’t the only judge to have caught the eye.
Fellow conservative Neil Gorsuch sold, just after his Supreme Court confirmation in 2017, a large property in Colorado to law firm executive Greenberg Traurig who regularly litigates cases in the high court, according to Politico.
“Indefensible”
“The absence of a formal structure to define and validate the ethical rules governing Supreme Court justices is indefensible,” warned Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge, before Congress on Tuesday.
Controlled by the Democrats, this commission had invited the head of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, also a conservative, to testify. But the judge refused, citing “concerns related to the separation of powers and the importance of preserving the independence of justice”.
The Republicans sitting on this commission have accused their Democratic colleagues of trying to “discredit” the judges of the Court, whose appointments are validated by the Senate, with this hearing.
“Democrats should file a case at the yeep-eep club and move on,” urged Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy.
Flight and tumults
All of this turmoil comes after a tumultuous year for the Supreme Court.
It canceled the constitutional protection of abortion, limited the means of the federal state to fight against global warming or even reinforced the right to carry a weapon.
The institution also suffered an unprecedented leak. Its decision on abortion, which allowed about fifteen states to ban it, had been obtained by Politico before its publication – a year ago to the day.
Its popularity has reached a low: 58% of Americans consider that it does its job badly.
In his letter inviting the head of the Supreme Court to testify, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, had noted that “revelations about judges who do not respect the ethical rules expected [n’avaient] ceased to multiply.
John Roberts had attached to his response a copy of the Supreme Court’s ethical guidelines and a statement signed by the nine wise men in which they reaffirmed “fundamental ethical principles and practices”.