Supreme Court of the United States Statement Regarding the Code of Conduct [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court of the United States Statement Regarding the Code of Conduct [pdf]

supremecourt.gov

44 pointsAmorymeltzer33 comments

This is why supreme court conclusions (and law in general) MUST base themselves on the constitution. The more interpretation involved, the wider the door to influence pedaling becomes. The constitution needs to be strictly interpreted and there should be no place for "updating" its meaning based on shifting cultural trends.

The threat of influence pedaling is also a good reason to keep the justice count small. Increasing the justice count increases the attack surface and also makes it harder to track. In addition to granting the executive branch more influence over the courts.

The Constitution is not written in a way that is specific or clear enough to take interpretation out of it. To be quite frank, neither is the legislation in any common law system.

I'm not talking about that. There is a difference between interpreting ambiguity in the constitution and reinterpreting clearly stated aspects to satisfy recent cultural trends.

Which recent decision(s) count as reinterpreting clearly stated aspects to satisfy recent cultural trends?

Roe v. Wade is a typical originalist example because they came up with first and third trimester lines for regulating a medical procedure that the authors of the document they were interpreting did not know existed.

A much older example is the authority of the supreme court to interpret the constitution. It's actually a self-assigned power that built up over the first fifty or so years of the United States' history as they grew bolder in challenging the legality of laws. It is not conferred in the constitution.

Roe v. Wade is 50 years old. The interpretation thing is hundreds of years old. These aren't reinterpretations satisfying recent cultural trends.

I've never read anything more out-to-lunch than this in my life. Clarence Thomas is a signatory of this code of conduct; in what way has he avoided impropriety and even the appearance of impropriety while accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free vacations, housing for his family members, a six-figure recreational vehicle, free private schooling for his child, from straight up lobbyists such as Harlan Crow, on whose affairs Thomas would later rule without recusing himself or even disclosing the existence of these frank bribes that had to be dug up later by journalists? Every decision with Thomas's assent on it should be considered corrupt and legally invalid until proven otherwise.

> Every decision with Thomas's assent on it should be considered corrupt and legally invalid until proven otherwise.

It's not just Thomas. Alito was found to have done the same stuff.

Sotomayor and Kagan have been accused as well. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-documents-co...

That link doesn't seem to support your claim at all? It only says that Sotomayor and Kagan were the subject of inquiries to universities as part of this investigation into the entire Supreme Court, not that they are accused of any wrongdoing.

How about this link then: https://thehill.com/homenews/4091544-liberal-justices-caught...

That helps, thanks! Not a good look for Sotomayor there either.

His signature is to be taken as indication that he will abide by it lest the Court be forced to, unprecedentedly, invent punishments - or worse, have them prescribed by the Congress. It would also make the situation even worse for the two members who got this written if they were seen to not sign the code that was signed by all of the other justices.

I feel like his signature is taken to be an indication that he believes he has already always followed this code -- that is, he endorses the statement in the preamble that it "largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct."

This is what really gets to me--it is explicitly framed as a PR exercise: "The absence of a code...has led to the misunderstanding that the Justices regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules." Missing is any acknowledgment that the Code may not have been followed in the past.

>"the Justices regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules"

That's a confession, not a diversion. How could they have abided by the code while regarding themselves as "unrestricted by any ethics rules?"

They didn't say they regarded themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. They said people thought wrongly they regarded themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.

> The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.

Should read "misunderstanding by the Justices of this Court". Otherwise, this wouldn't be necessary. The lengths authority and institutions go through to avoid acknowledging it's own wrongdoing...

A code of conduct usually sets expectations in the presence of managers or moderators who will enforce acceptable conduct. What is the point of this document that applies to the highest authority in the land? Who will enforce it?

Is any process or sanctions for transgressors?

Now that we've entrenched the ideas that impeachment and the judiciary are political weapons we've broken the checks and balances that the constitution put in place. In the before times Thomas would've been impeached in a bipartisan manner.

If Congress wanted to do that, they could have acted years ago.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38254231

The various comments complaining that Justices have violated this Code in the past are forgetting that modern law and society looks dimly on ex-post-facto rulemaking and such laws are in fact forbidden by the Constitution. Past actions are certainly not covered under a code that is promulgated as of today.

Anyway, it looks like a step forward. It will be interesting to see if there is any movement from Congress should the Code be violated.

Impeachment is not a legal process.

It's not just some arbitrary rule, though. It's a principle that's widely understood to apply in all sorts of situations.

Means nothing if not enforced.

lol, what does this do?

"I totally promise to not do bad things."

Who wrote this a child? Oh yeah, Roberts. What a joke.

On the basis of this code, it would appear that Justices Thomas and Alito would need to recuse themselves from the overwhelming majority of the court's cases. Thomas especially runs afoul of Canon 3.B(2)(a), (b), (c), (d), and (f).

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