“Compromised beyond measure”: Experts urge Senate to pass SCOTUS ethics code amid Alito flag debacle

A prominent legal expert says Senate passage of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s bill to require the Supreme Court to adopt a stronger ethics code could send a powerful message – even if its passage through the current House of Representatives is a likely impossibility. And, you know, if Justice Alito doesn't want Congress to impose an enforcement mechanism, he and Justice Thomas at some level have only themselves to blame.” Sample said that if the Supreme Court had adopted an enforcement mechanism or honored longstanding norms, "we might not be having this discussion." The bill would give the Supreme Court 180 days to issue a procedure for individuals to file complaints alleging that a justice has violated the code of conduct, disqualification rules laid out in U.S. code § 455, “any other applicable provision of federal law” or “has otherwise engaged in conduct that undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court.” Once the Supreme Court submits a complaint, the court would then submit it to a judicial investigation panel composed of five randomly selected judges from among the chief judges of each of the U.S. circuits. The Supreme Court's current ethics code — based on the existing Code of Conduct for lower federal court judges — requires that judges and justices “refrain from political activity” and avoid “all impropriety and appearance of impropriety in all activities.” And the Code of Conduct states that a “judge should not knowingly make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.” Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Alito himself has balked at calls for more transparency and stringent ethical requirements, telling the Wall Street Journal last summer that “Congress lacks the power to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.” "The traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute,” Alito said.