US Supreme Court announces formal ethics code for justices ( www.reuters.com )

The code contains sections codifying that justices should not allow outside relationships to influence their official conduct or judgment, placing restrictions on justices participating in fundraising and reiterating limits on the accepting of gifts. It also states that justices should not “to any substantial degree” use their judicial resources or staff to engage in non-official activities.

Note that it sounds like this has NOT been officially adopted yet and so far there is no obvious means of enforcement.

See also: www.nytimes.com/…/supreme-court-ethics-code.html

Edit: Politco has posted the PDF of the “CODE OF CONDUCT FOR JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES”

SteposVenzny ,

The nine-page code contains sections codifying that justices should not let outside relationships influence their official conduct or judgment,

Even if there were enforcement, this is a comically weak restriction. It looks like all it’s asking is to behave as though you don’t have a conflict of interests when you do have a conflict of interests.

shiveyarbles ,

There’s no enforcement, it’s just trust based. Literally taking bribes from billionaires for rulings, and they’re off scott free

storksforlegs ,
@storksforlegs@beehaw.org avatar

Relax everybody! They solved the ethics problem on their own!! Phew, democracy saved.

argo_yamato ,

Seems like they are just making something up to see if people stop paying attention. It will not change a thing.

Rottcodd ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    memfree OP ,

    Yup!

    charonn0 ,
    @charonn0@startrek.website avatar

    Notably, they did not adopt the same code of ethics that all other federal judges are held to.

    Fauxreigner ,

    From the opening page

    The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice. The absence of a Code, however, 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. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.

    So…

    1. Why, if you think the code that applies to all other federal judges is good, did you not simply adopt it?
    2. So the problem is that people think the justices consider them not bound by ethics rules because they don’t have a formal code, not the behaviors of certain justices that have come to light in recent years, got it.
    theangriestbird ,
    @theangriestbird@beehaw.org avatar

    To me, it feels like this is just written confirmation that they functionally have no code of ethics. They’ve been dodging the question for months, so I guess this is progress?

    raccoona_nongrata ,
    @raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    Fauxreigner ,

    More to the point, there are some perfectly suitable rules that every other federal judge is bound to, we don’t need a new set of rules at all.

    Omegamanthethird ,

    I mean, aren’t they just saying they have to promise bribes aren’t impacting their decisions while confirming they can definitely use official resources for unofficial reasons?

    Seems like it’s just codifying the wrong things.

    theangriestbird ,
    @theangriestbird@beehaw.org avatar

    I think you and I agree, we just phrased the same idea in two different ways

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