Due to certain property deals and undisclosed gifts both received and dealt with by the Supreme Court Justices, the court has decided to set an ethics code. This set of rules and ethics have actually been in place in the past, but have not been enforced or investigated into. Certain judges have been able to avoid the code without repercussions, but the hope is that these rules will stick more this time around. 

The nine page written code does not strictly say that the judges cannot be receiving and dealing gifts, property, and lavish travel. But it does say that the judges should not participate in activities from outside that would take away or distract from the judges office, affect the judges neutrality, or lead to frequent disqualification. The rules do prohibit judges from allowing “family, social, political, financial or other relationships to influence official conduct or judgment.” The judges must also remove themselves from a case in an instant of personal or financial bias. 

This code is almost the same as the code that exists for other federal judges. The reason that the Supreme Court did not have a specific code before was because of their special constitutional status. The Supreme Court has based their unofficial code of ethics off of this for a while, however there was a bit of a loophole when it came to recusal, as Supreme Court Justices were encouraged not to remove themselves from a case, as they could not be replaced. This created an excuse for the judges that the new ethics code is trying to patch. It was said by the court that, “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.” Because of both confusion and controversy, the court decided that it would be best to place a concrete set of laws to ensure any issue in the future. 

In all, it is the hope that this set of ethics will help avoid bias or issue in future cases, and keep the judges in check when necessary. Certain sources have been concerned with the court’s lack of acknowledgement with past issues in bias- specifically regarding the things restricted in this very ethics code. While it is a very important step in the right direction, not everyone thinks that it is enough to fix certain issues at the moment. Hopefully, this set of ethics will bring some “order in the court”. 

Cites

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/us/politics/supreme-court-ethics-code.html

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf