Supreme Court's New Code of Conduct Won’t Change a Thing
Although the justices can say they are not tone deaf to their own ethical lapses, they will continue to be the judges of their own ethical propriety.
A new era or more of the same?
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
It’s great that the US Supreme Court promulgated a code of conduct for the justices. It should help put an end to the narrative that the court has been tone deaf to criticism of its ethical lapses. That said, the code will change nothing substantive about the way the justices conduct themselves. The code provisions roughly match those of the code that binds lower federal court judges – and that in practice the justices have been following for years. And no independent entity will formally apply the code to the Supreme Court. The justices will continue to be judges of their own ethical propriety – a product of the constitutional system that makes the Supreme Court the highest organ of the judicial branch.
The justices did not equivocate when it came to explaining why they are announcing the code now. A statement preceding the code explained that “for the most part these rules and principles are not new.” The problem was “the absence of a code,” which the court said “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.”