Political motives lie not far beneath the surface of everything Congress does. That is appropriate in a democracy. But we expect the House, and especially the Senate, to retain at least some pretense of exercising its powers in the public interest. Instead, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are abusing its investigatory powers simply to campaign against Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow.

Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, and their committee will reportedly vote within the next two weeks to subpoena Leo and Crow, as well as Robin Arkley II, who is targeted over a fishing trip with Justice Samuel Alito 15 years ago. The topic is their friendships with Alito and, primarily, Justice Clarence Thomas. The pretext is that the committee needs this information in order to draft legislation imposing a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.

The reality is that the committee already drafted that legislation, voted on it, and declared it a “comprehensive” solution; that it has no prospect of becoming law; and that it is flagrantly unconstitutional because it interferes in the inner workings of the judiciary and allows lower-court judges to supervise the Supreme Court — indeed, to do so in ways that may intimidate the justices from exercising their own constitutional duty to supervise the lower courts.

The subpoenas are being used to generate partisan fundraising appeals and campaign commercials attacking the legitimacy of the independent judiciary and casting doubt upon the entire project of the rule of written law. But wait, Durbin and Whitehouse say: If they are able to extort the justices into adopting their desired rules, they could drop the investigation. In a joint statement, they argued that “the Chief Justice could fix this problem today and adopt a binding code of conduct. As long as he refuses to act, the Judiciary Committee will.” This is precisely the argument used by President Biden when he regularly usurps the powers of Congress. The point of separation of powers is that a branch can not only act; it can decline to act. The Constitution has no “the powers of one branch can be exercised by another if it doesn’t get its way” clause.

While with Crow and Arkley, the primary motive is to tarnish the two most stalwart conservative justices, as we have previously observed when it comes to Leo, the real grievance of the legal Left is that Leo has proven effective at its own game. There is a longstanding apparatus of dark money and institutional influence on the left, and the committee is turning a willful blind eye to investigating any of it — because that would cut too close to home. The liberal justices have accepted trips from the Aspen Ideas Festival, from the Pritzker family (a member of whom is the Democratic governor of Illinois), and from Planned Parenthood and NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had a privately funded celebration of her investiture, the funding and attendees for which are unknown. Justice Sonia Sotomayor accepted international travel from NYU Law School, apparently just to attend a conference. Former justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted lavish travel paid for by wealthy donors. The committee is doing nothing to look into any of this, because its motives are entirely partisan.

Two can play at this game, and the House Judiciary Committee is now looking into the D.C. attorney general’s partisan abuse of his office to harass Leo. But it would be better if the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as if it respected the separation of powers and the freedoms of speech and association.

(Disclosure: Harlan Crow has donated to National Review Institute, and the institute has received grant money from a nonprofit network that was established by Leonard Leo.)