‘An ethical crisis of its own making’: Democrats blast Supreme Court ethics 

A report from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee has detailed new allegations about the “lavish gifts” justices on the United States Supreme Court received from donors.

The 93-page report, released on Saturday, culminates a nearly 20-month investigation led by outgoing Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin.

It builds on previous reporting from the news outlet ProPublica that raised questions about potential conflicts of interest on the highest court in the land.

The report, however, claims to have uncovered never-before-reported trips allegedly taken by Justice Clarence Thomas at the expense of real estate developer Harlan Crow, a prominent supporter of the Republican Party.

While other justices are also named in the report, it singles out Thomas for particular censure.

“The number, value, and extravagance of the gifts accepted by Justice Thomas have no comparison in modern American history,” the report reads.

Justice Thomas has yet to respond publicly to the report’s allegations.

Prominent Senate Democrats like Durbin have long pushed for the Supreme Court to institute a watertight code of ethics to prevent conflicts of interest and ensure compliance with disclosure mandates.

In their report, the Democrats slammed the Supreme Court’s chief justice, conservative John Roberts, for not taking more forceful steps to crack down on the apparent ethical lapses.

“Chief Justice Roberts’s continued unwillingness to implement the only viable solution to the Court’s ethical crisis — an enforceable code of conduct — requires Congress to act to restore the public’s confidence in the highest court in the land,” the report said.

It accused the court of failing to deal with “an ethical crisis of its own making”.

In the wake of ProPublica’s investigation, Roberts did take steps to implement a Supreme Court code of ethics.

The court never had such a code before. But critics pointed out that the new code, agreed to unanimously by the justices in November 2023, included no means of enforcing its tenets or investigating possible violations.

That has led to further public outcry. The polling firm Gallup reported on December 17 that confidence in the US judicial system had sunk to a record low, making it an outlier from other relatively wealthy countries.

Gallup found that 55 percent of residents of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expressed confidence in their courts, as a median.

In the US, however, that number was only 35 percent.

Saturday’s report is likely to contribute to that scepticism. The report itself acknowledges the crisis of public faith.

“The public is now far more aware of the extent of the largesse certain justices have received and how these justices and their billionaire benefactors continue to act with impunity,” it said.

The report specifies that “justices appointed by presidents of both parties” have engaged in ethically dubious behaviour. It criticises left-leaning Justice Sonia Sotomayor for initially failing to disclose travel and lodging from the University of Rhode Island while on a book tour.

However, the report reserves some of its most scathing criticism for Justice Thomas and his conservative colleagues, Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia.

Many of the incidents have been detailed elsewhere before. For instance, the report points out that Justice Thomas has failed to recuse himself in cases where his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, had a stake in the outcome. The report asserts that this constitutes a violation of federal law.

ProPublica had previously chronicled Thomas’s trips on board Crow’s yacht and private jet, potentially worth thousands of dollars. But Saturday’s report also highlights two newly-revealed trips in October 2021 to Saranac, New York, and to New York City.

In previous public statements, Thomas has maintained he “always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines”. He has also characterised his outings with Crow as “family trips” made with some of his “dearest friends”.

Another friend of Justice Thomas, lawyer Mark Paoletta, responded to the Democrats’ report on social media.

He accused Democratic Senators of “smearing” Justice Thomas and attacking the court, which currently has a six-to-three conservative supermajority.

“This entire investigation was never about ‘ethics’ but about trying to undermine the Supreme Court,” Paoletta wrote.

“The Left has invented recusal standards to attack the Justices [and] try to force them off cases. It has not worked.”

Earlier this year, in June, Republican senators blocked a Democrat-led bill designed to create an enforcement mechanism for ethics violations on the court, called the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act.

But Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioned the bill’s constitutionality and called it an overreach.

In January, Republicans are set to hold a majority in the Senate, which is currently led by Democrats. Once they do, they will have control of both chambers of Congress.