Teaching gigs or luxe vacations? Justices’ ethics under scrutiny.

Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the Supreme Court should follow the standards of other government branches. 

First Look

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday it was time for Supreme Court justices to bring their conduct in line with the ethical standards of other branches of government.

“If they just establish the basic standards of every other branch of government, it would give us much more confidence in their integrity,” said Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. He made the comments in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he was attending the NATO summit as part of the U.S. delegation.

The Associated Press recently published a series of stories revealing questionable ethical practices by Supreme Court justices. They showed that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade; that universities have used trips by justices as a lure for financial contributions by placing them in event rooms with wealthy donors, and that justices have taken expenses-paid “teaching” trips to attractive locations that are light on actual classroom instruction.

The AP series came on the heels of other recent reports that have raised ethical concerns about the activities of the justices, including several pieces by ProPublica that examined the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and a billionaire conservative businessman.

Lawmakers in Washington have announced a committee vote next week on legislation that would require the court to adopt an ethics code, known as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. The measure, which would be subject to a filibuster in the full Senate, is considered unlikely to pass. But it sends a signal of growing discontent about the court.

The nation’s highest court currently operates without an ethics code, instead being loosely guided by what Chief Justice John Roberts has referred to as a set of “ethics principles and practices.”

“The Supreme Court will no longer exist as a truly viable institution if it continues the failure to face the need for a code of ethics,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on Tuesday.

But Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, another member of the Judiciary Committee, said he believes Congress should leave the ethics issue to the court and that the Democrats’ pursuit of ethics reform “is part of a longstanding assault against the court that the left feels is undermining a lot of things they’ve accomplished over the years by judicial action. To me, that’s the motivating factor.”

“I think it’s a co-equal branch of government we don’t have jurisdiction over. Secondly, I think this is part of a false narrative that the court is out of control and needs Congress to save it,” Senator Cornyn said.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics, said the latest reporting reveals the extent to which “ethics problems at the Supreme Court is an equal opportunity scandal.”

“It’s not just about Clarence Thomas and [Samuel] Alito,” Ms. Clark said, referring to earlier media reporting about the two conservative justices. “It’s an institutional rather than individual problem.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press.