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In the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, ranking GOP member Lindsey Graham described Democratic-backed Supreme Court ethics legislation as “a bill to destroy a conservative court.”
If so, it’s a damning indictment of a court that the South Carolina Republican helped build.
The bill at issue at Thursday’s markup is the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023, or SCERT Act. Among other things, it would make the justices adopt a code of conduct and establish procedures to receive and investigate complaints of judicial misconduct. The bill was introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
To state the obvious, the proposed law would apply to all Supreme Court justices, no matter which party’s president appointed them. The committee’s chair, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., even noted recent reporting about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff pushing people to buy her books in the same breath as Justices Clarence Thomas’ and Samuel Alito’s undisclosed private jet adventures with conservative billionaires.
Of course, the Republican appointees’ conduct isn’t comparable to Sotomayor’s, but Democrats are still citing her relatively minor story in support of reform, the prospect of which has Republicans all worked up.
Indeed, the GOP’s hysterical reaction underscores the minimal ask here — that the justices, in some form, play by the same rules as their lower-court colleagues.
That Republicans are effectively concerned about how their appointed justices would fare under binding ethical constraints speaks volumes.