// The ethical quandary that is the current Supreme Court is far from over. The summer of SCOTUS ethics scandals bled into the fall without anything resembling an answer. Sure, some members of the Court are *boldly* coming out in favor of an enforceable ethical code for the High Court, but too many — notably those caught up in said scandals — are firmly against it. Take Justice Samuel Alito’s self-serving interviews with the Wall Street Journal pronouncing he’s, well, above the law, saying, “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” Of course, that’s a wrong take.)

Justice Clarence Thomas has born the brunt of the scrutiny — and for good reason! ProPublica initially released an article detailing the two decades of Justice Thomas receiving travel and other gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow. A few days later, we got more details of the financial entanglement between the two men as it was revealed Crow bought from Thomas three pieces of property — including one Thomas’s mother lives on — and improved it, all with Thomas’s mother never paying rent. Then we got the news Crow paid for schooling for the family member Thomas considers like a son. He was a member of a fancy rich person club, and had bunches of billionaire friends that lavished him with pricey gifts. Even the RV Thomas uses to establish his everyman bone fides was financed by a rich buddy, via a “loan” that was never paid back. Sure, there’s lip service to increased disclosures, there’s no actual movement on the issue.

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But Justice Thomas wasn’t the only jurist caught up in the scandals. There was the questionable Neil Gorsuch real estate deal. The luxury trips taken by Alito — coordinated by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo and lodging provided by GOP donor Robin Arkley II, and so much more. With questions about the appearance of impropriety, and Chief Justice John Roberts abdicating responsibility, members of Congress began to think about what their branch of government can do to stop the free-falling trust in the Court.

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Now Senate Judiciary Democrats announced their plan to vote on issuing subpoenas to Crow, Leo, and Arkley — asking nicely hasn’t worked as well as they’d like. In a statement by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse they noted the trip “either refused to comply or offered to produce certain limited information that fell well short of what the Committee needs.”

The move is designed to find more information about the expensive gifts the justices have been quiet about:

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“By accepting these lavish, undisclosed gifts, the justices have enabled their wealthy benefactors and other individuals with business before the Court to gain private access to the justices while preventing public scrutiny of this conduct,” they said in a statement.

“In order to adequately address this crisis, it is imperative that we understand the full extent of how people with interests before the Court are able to use undisclosed gifts to gain private access to the justices,” the statement continued.

As Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth notes, there aren’t many other options for the Senators that care about disclosure:

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“Justices Thomas’ and Justice Alito’s patrons have had ample opportunity to come clean and offer a full accounting of the largesse they’ve provided. But after months of the benefactors’ obstruction, Chairman Durbin had no alternative but to call for a vote authorizing subpoenas.

“Information obtained via subpoena will fill in some key blanks on the justices’ past disclosure reports, which still contain glaring omissions in violation of federal law. It will be useful for revealing the depths of the ethics scandal the Court now finds itself in and for crafting laws aimed at reducing corrupting influences in and around the institution.

“I applaud Senate Democrats for their continuing efforts to hold the Court accountable, and I look forward to more where this came from.”

This is a great step to find out exactly what happened in the past, but stronger ethical rules are necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

 

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Clarence Thomas, Courts, Gabe Roth, Judicial Ethics, Samuel Alito