Classic “we have investigated ourselves, and admit to no evidence of wrongdoing”
Close, but they didn’t even claim to investigate themselves. They just created a document of theoretical standards they pinky swear they will follow in the future but that they claim no one has the power to actually judge them by.
Anyways they’re wrong, congress has the power to regulate the supreme court, including removing justices. Good luck finding a 2/3rd vote for that though.
Anyways they’re wrong, congress has the power to regulate the supreme court, including removing justices. Good luck finding a 2/3rd vote for that though.
Psh, SCOTUS has already determined that the Congress does not have the power. Clearly, when the framers of the Constitution wrote in all those clauses about oversight, the framers didn’t actual mean that. /s
“I have decided that Marbury v Madison is no longer binding precedent, and therefore SCOTUS has no constitutionally-derived right of judicial review.”
President could do this. In fact, I’ll bet $100 in a GOP president doing this in the next 20 years.
SCOTUS only has power because we chose to believe that SCOTUS has powers. The only real branch that enforce the law is the Executive branch and that’s only because they have the Police and the Military on their side.
:/ Oh well case closed then. Who could argue with that?
My first reaction when I saw it was that it appears to be the case that the justices are not only corrupt, but stupid. Or pathological. Or both.
It’s not just that it’s unenforceable - even though it’s unenforceable, it also goes out of its way to be weak and mealy-mouthed. They couldn’t even manage to make any clear statements - it’s all vaguely non-specific gestures that boil down to “we sort of think that justices maybe oughta not do things that might look bad to other people.” As if the whole notion of judicial ethics is so far outside of their awareness that they not only can’t impose any, but can’t even manage to put together a passable pretense.
Presumably it was supposed to help - to make it look as if they do actually have some ethics. And it resoundingly failed.
What it did for me was move me from reasonably sure that at least some of them are corrupt to dead certain that they all are, and not only corrupt but so grossly corrupt that they don’t even know how to pretend otherwise.
I know they’re trying to save their image since they have such a low approval rating, but this is making it worse. They have people on the bench doing incredibly unethical things that a lower judge would probably be in jail for. They need oversight with consequences for the current things they’re doing, not a laughable code.
“the absence of a code 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."
Who has misunderstood this? Oh, the justices of the Supreme Court themselves did. Good they remind themselves now, that they are restricted by ethics rules. Sad that they had to be reminded of it. Even more sad, that they can’t specify the ethics rules, because if they would they immediately would call out the ones who did clearly not follow them. That also does not speak for them, because it means the ones who did not follow ethics rules in fact are still unrestricted by them.
This is worse than ignoring the problem. It is admitting that they were and are the problem and admitting they were and are unwilling to do something against it. Well done. This will be teaching material for everyone in the justice system for years to come.
The current Supreme Court is made up of 9 people who have lifetime appointments, no oversight, and no viable way to hold a stray judge accountable.
Until this changes, any “code of ethics” is completely worthless and unenforceable, and therefore isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Anything like this without an independent method of oversight and enforcement isn’t a “law” or “code” that will be rigidly enforced, but merely a set of guidelines that can be safely ignored the nanosecond it becomes inconvenient.
Technically, a judge or justice can be impeached and/or removed, but I get what you mean
Yeah that’s why I said no viable way. It’s the only actual way they can be removed, but the chances of that happening anytime in the foreseeable future are virtually non-existent.
Why even bother pretending to enact a code of ethics now when all the damage has already been done. You’re in American politics, you have no code of ethics. The End.
I want to see how Fox news is covering this story. If they can convince half the country that the Supreme Court is an upstanding institution, then it will have been worth the farce.
Faux News will cover it like this
It’s an Ethics Code alright, the code just happens to read “G. O. F. U. C. K. Y. O. U. R. S. E. L. F.”
“B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E”
They’re just guidelines. . .
Yep, just guidelines, like putting up a sign saying “don’t stab yourself in the face” after you’ve been stabbing yourself in the face for years. Great guidance, there - really helps a bunch.
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