U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts waits for U.S. President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress within the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. February 4, 2020.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in a letter Monday answered additional questions about ethics on the high court — however the Democratic leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee was lower than impressed along with his response.
Roberts’ answers “further highlight the necessity for meaningful Supreme Court ethics reform, which the Committee will discuss at our hearing tomorrow,” the Democratic-led Judiciary Committee said in a Twitter post.
Within the letter, Roberts revealed that the Supreme Court’s nine justices last Tuesday subscribed to a recently updated “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices.”
That got here after news articles revealing Justice Clarence Thomas had for greater than twenty years didn’t disclose luxurious vacations gifted to him and his wife by Republican billionaire Harlan Crow, whose company also purchased Georgia property belonging to Thomas and his relatives.
Thomas, whose mother continues to live to tell the tale one among those properties as a tenant to Crow’s company, likewise didn’t publicly disclose the acquisition before ProPublica revealed it.
The revelations come because the Supreme Court is experiencing historically low levels of public approval.
The Judiciary Committee is eyeing how one can improve ethics on the court.
The committee’s chair, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-In poor health., on April 20 invited Roberts to testify Tuesday before the panel about ethics reform on the court.
Roberts declined the invitation, writing to Durbin that his appearance before the committee could harm the independence of the judiciary, which with Congress form two of the three branches of the federal government.
Roberts’ response included a press release of ethics principles and practices “to which all of the present Members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”
The Supreme Court, unlike lower federal courts, is just not sure by a compulsory code of conduct.
After Roberts declined to look for the hearing, Durbin sent him one other letter that said the “statement of principles raises more questions than it resolves.”
Durbin’s letter asked Roberts several questions, including whether justices receive guidance on which authorities to seek the advice of on ethical questions, whether justices face any consequences for omissions of their financial disclosure reports, and whether there’s a process for the general public to file complaints against justices for failing to abide by the statement.
In his response Monday, Roberts wrote that “as with all issue that will require research, Justices seek the advice of a wide range of guidance on ethics issues,” after which offered a laundry list of sources for such guidance, amongst them “statutes, judicial opinions … and historical practice, amongst other sources.”
Roberts wrote that up to now, the Judicial Conference Committee on Financial Disclosure inquired about justices’ disclosures, which in some cases ended with no further motion, and in others that resulted in justices selecting to or being advised to file an amended disclosure report.
“I’m not aware of any instance by which a Justice and the Committee didn’t resolve any issues that led to an inquiry,” the chief justice wrote.
“And, given the history of resolving such issues, I’m not aware of penalties which have been imposed on Justices for failure to abide by such principles or practices recited within the statement,” he wrote.
Roberts in his letter didn’t answer whether there’s a process for a member of the general public to file a grievance against the justices for failing to abide by the statement of principles.
