Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is seeking what will hopefully be the testimony of Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court on the handling of ethical issues either already present or potentially looming among members of the court.
The decisions those judges make can impact, of course, hundreds of millions of Americans at a time, and yet, it seems members of the court remain not formally bound to the same basic ethics code under which judges elsewhere in the federal courts already operate. Some of the rules that apparently do bind the court’s members anyway have already been flouted, it seems, which adds to the problem.
That contributing factor has emerged in circumstances surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas, whose lengthy — and, for the judge, beneficial — relationship with GOP billionaire Harlan Crow has recently been the subject of widely circulated reports. Crow has provided Clarence and the latter’s wife, Ginni, with access to extremely pricey travel through means like a private jet and a yacht over the years. One trip, it seems, would’ve cost Thomas hundreds of thousands of dollars to assemble on his own, and all of these circumstances help open up opportunities for corrupt influence.
“Your last significant discussion of how Supreme Court Justices address ethical issues was presented in your 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Since then, there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally,” Durbin wrote to Roberts (that’s an understatement). “These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable.” Durbin offered that another member of the court could testify on Robert’s behalf, should the chief judge so choose. The request for testimony is not — yet, at least — in the form of a subpoena, which would generally be binding on the judge.
