Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee told the Washington Examiner they would either support an ethics code for the Supreme Court initiated by Chief Justice John Roberts or were outright calling for Congress to pass an ethics reform bill, though they were split on which tactic is the right move forward.
The shift in position follows a recent report from the Associated Press detailing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s team pressuring public institutions that have hosted her to buy hundreds, sometimes thousands, of her books.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pushed back against previous criticisms that Democrats were targeting conservative justices. “Whatever changes we make, if any, in (the) code of ethics or ethical disclosure by the Supreme Court will apply to all justices regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum,” Durbin told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday morning.
He declined to say if he thought news of a liberal justice having an ethics scandal would encourage Republicans to get behind a Supreme Court ethics reform push.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the committee’s ranking member, conceded that the Sotomayor news showcased “problems that the court needs to deal with” but said the responsibility to address those issues lies with the chief justice.
“I don't think it's our job to do this,” he said.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) concurred with Graham, saying, “The chief justice needs — I think he's doing this — but he needs to revisit the code of ethics for the court and make sure everybody understands what their obligations are.”
“I don't think this is an occasion for the Congress to get involved,” he added. “They’re a co-equal branch of government, and they're accustomed to dealing with these issues on their own.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) remarked to the Washington Examiner that he hoped the accusations against Sotomayor weren’t true, noting that the report “doesn't sound good.”
Like Graham and Cornyn, Hawley called for some type of ethics reform on the high court. “I do think that the way for this to be solved is for the court to … follow the code of judicial conduct that all of the other federal courts follow,” he said. “That would be the best-case scenario, if they would actually follow the code of judicial conduct and implement their own ethics guidelines.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said he hadn’t read the Associated Press’s story, noting it is in his “reading file.”
“The Supreme Court revised their ethics division within the last year or two,” he continued. “I don't know this for a fact, but I would not faint with surprise to find out that Justice Roberts works on that issue likely every day with his colleagues.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said he also hadn’t read the Sotomayor report but offered a similar take to Kennedy.
“Responding more broadly to the concerns about all the justices, every other federal judge in America is bound by a code of judicial ethics that has reporting requirements and enforcement capabilities,” Coons said. “I cannot understand why Chief Justice Roberts, having been given the opportunity, fails to act to impose or adopt a similar code.”
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If there had been an ethics code before the Sotomayor news, “there would be a clear process for resolving it,” he added.
The Associated Press report follows ProPublica’s reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas accepting luxury trips and gifts from billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow. News of Thomas’s undisclosed gifts largely sparked outrage among Democrats, with few Republican defections.