Well, John, it’s been a week since the Supreme Court dropped its new “code of conduct,” and the resounding response has been: you’ve gotta be kidding me.

With no clear enforcement mechanism and about 8 uses of the word “should” to every one use of the word “must,” the new rules read a lot more like a friendly suggestion than a binding document meant to rein in the right-wing justices’ rampant corruption.

In case you missed the news, here are some highlights from the coverage: 

• How the Supreme Court settled on an ethics code — and what it left out (The Washington Post): “The document borrows heavily from the code that applies to lower court judges at the federal trial and appeals court levels but with some important differences that Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates say give the justices too much wiggle room when it comes to outside influence, past transgressions and recusal from cases in which justices may have a conflict of interest.”
  
  
• We Waited 200 Years for This Supreme Court Ethics Code? (The New York Times): “Regular Americans understand perfectly well what’s going on. If they question the justices’ commitment to ethical virtue, it’s because of the justices’ own behavior. The lack of a written code — the actual way in which they are unlike all other judges, who have been subject to such a code for the past 50 years — is merely emblematic of the deeper problem, which is that the Supreme Court considers itself answerable to no one.”
  
  
• Supreme Court’s New Ethics Code Is Too Little, Far Too Late (The Daily Beast): The high court appears to be doing damage control in response to the stream of revelations about the justices like the recent ProPublica outing of Justice Samuel Alito not disclosing having been treated to a fishing trip at a lodge that costs $1,000 a day to which he was flown by private jet — a trip that would have lightened Alito’s wallet by $100,000 if he paid for it himself — courtesy of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer who ‘has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.’”

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that this is far from the end of the fight to make the Supreme Court more ethical. And if you want to follow along with all the details, we have a resource for you: our Substack page!

Here’s our latest post, in which we take a closer look at the Court’s laughable “code of conduct”:

On our Substack, we delve deeper into the detailed (and sometimes more technical) side of the cases the court is considering, share our thoughts on the right-wing justices’ ethics scandals du jour, and hopefully, hear thoughts from you in our comments. 

It’s a one-stop shop for all our musings on the court — and we’d love for you to join us!

Hope to see you there,

Sarah Lipton-Lubet
President, Take Back the Court Action Fund