This week, the ethical scandals around Justice Clarence Thomas and the Roberts Supreme Court deepened and the Chief Justice doubled down, refusing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and rejecting calls for the Court to self-regulate. Most recently, ProPublica exposed that billionaire Harlan Crow covered the tuition costs to send Thomas’s grandnephew, Mark Martin, to elite private schools on top of footing the bill for luxury family vacations. Justice Thomas was Martin’s legal guardian and had been raising the then-teenager “as a son,” but it was Crow who was paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for his education.
In response to the flood of disclosure violations and ethical infractions mounting at the nation’s highest court, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform Tuesday. Ahead of the hearing, Alliance for Justice co-hosted a press conference with partner organizations and senators to call for Supreme Court ethics reform. AFJ President Rakim Brooks made it clear that Justice Thomas must resign and our Supreme Court justices must be held accountable under a binding code of ethics—just like every other federal judge in America. Also before the hearing, and running throughout this week, AFJ launched a five-figure ad buy in the Washington Post with a video and banner ads highlighting the need for Justice Thomas to resign.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Senators heard testimony from ethics scholars and experts, including two former federal judges, but not a single Supreme Court justice. Despite Chair Durbin’s request that Chief Justice Roberts testify or send another justice in his place, the Supreme Court chose not to engage in this critical discussion. Supreme Court justices are not above the law and at the bare minimum they must be held to the same ethical standards as other federal judges and government officials.
For more on the urgent need for judicial ethics reform at our highest court, read AFJ Senior Aron Justice Counsel Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza's new piece outlining solutions to corruption within the Supreme Court.
“By failing to self-regulate, Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative ilk have taken advantage of the trust the Framers and later Congress placed in the Supreme Court,” Rebecca writes.
