Dem
51
GOP
49
If we were a Supreme Court justice right now, we'd be going through our disclosure forms with a fine-toothed comb right now, knowing full well that reporters are doing the same. The latest judge to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar is Neil Gorsuch, who "forgot" a rather important piece of information on his very first disclosure form.
At issue here is 40 acres of land that Gorsuch once owned in rural Colorado. It was on the market for multiple years without any takers. Then, just more than a week after the Justice was confirmed to Court, it sold for a handsome price. What a great month! New job, and success with that long-lingering piece of real estate. On his paperwork for 2017, Gorsuch did acknowledge selling the land. But he somehow neglected to fill in the blank where the purchaser's name goes.
Politico managed to figure out who the purchaser was, however. Not too hard to do, since these things do leave a paper trail. It was the CEO of Greenberg Traurig, which is one of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms. As you might imagine, Greenberg Traurig has had business before the Supreme Court during Gorsuch's tenure. You know, once or twice. Or 22 times.
This does not necessarily mean that anything untoward took place, or that Gorsuch's vote was "bought." But the fact pattern certainly does not look good. And it means that, yet again, there's talk of reform, and of developing some sort of non-toothless set of ethical standards by which the members of SCOTUS must abide.
It is possible that, if another few missteps by judges are made public, the outcry could be so great that Congress is compelled to do something. But we doubt it, because of the Republicans. We write above that a clean debt-ceiling bill is key for Joe Biden. Well, when it comes to Supreme Court justices, the current "Wild West," anything-goes approach is key for the Republicans.
There are two, related issues here. The first is that the GOP sold its soul, perhaps literally, in order to secure a hammerlock on the Supreme Court. If Republican members of Congress agreed to a code of ethics that had actual teeth (which would mean some way to significantly punish or remove miscreants), then they would spend every day scared witless that still more dirt on Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito or Gorsuch might come to light, and one of the judges they seated by hook or by crook would be unseated. There is rather less chance that anyone would come up with dirt on Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan or Ketanji Brown Jackson. And even if someone did, their replacement, at the moment, would be chosen by a Democratic president and approved by a Democratic Senate.
The second problem is that, to a large extent, the conservative judicial project is built on a foundation of blurry lines. Activists rub elbows with donors, donors rub elbows with current and future judges, current and future judges rub elbows with political officeholders, and pretty much everyone is in bed with the Federalist Society. This state of affairs means it is vastly more likely that ethical lines will be crossed. The Democrats and their judges simply don't have an equivalent sort of political and economic incest.
And so, while it is painfully obvious that SCOTUS needs a code of conduct beyond the current "Do what feels right," we're not holding our breath. (Z)