Given the seriousness of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ethics controversies, and the degree to which the public has lost confidence in the institution, it’s hardly shocking that senators would consider a reform bill such as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.
In fact, the legislation isn’t especially radical. If approved, the measure would direct the court to adopt and publish a code of conduct, create recusal rules, establish new disclosure rules, and allow the public to submit ethics complaints to be evaluated by lower court judges.
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the bill, but as NBC News reported, the support was far from bipartisan.
The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee advanced legislation Thursday to require the Supreme Court to set up a code of conduct, tighten financial disclosures and bolster recusal requirements for justices. The vote on the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act was 11-10 along party lines, with Republicans adamantly opposed.
Literally zero GOP members of the panel supported the bill. Indeed, this wasn’t an instance in which Judiciary Committee Republicans opposed this legislation, but suggested they might be open to an amended, watered-down, less-ambitious alternative. Rather, they balked at the very idea of approving any kind of Supreme Court ethics reforms.
Helping lead the charge was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who declared during the proceedings that the legislation represented “a bill to destroy a conservative court” that he and the rest of the GOP have worked hard to build.
But that’s bizarre. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, “To state the obvious, the proposed law would apply to all Supreme Court justices, no matter which party’s president appointed them.” It’s not as if the bill targets conservative jurists; the plan would be to create guardrails for the institution itself, now and into the future.
What’s more, Graham conceded as recently as this week that the justices need to “get their house in order” — an explicit acknowledgement of the institution’s recent difficulties.
And yet, the same South Carolinian not only rejected the Democratic reform effort, he also insisted that lawmakers — who have oversight authority over the federal judiciary — steer clear of any kind of legislation on the matter. GOP senators are comfortable with ethics limits on lower courts, but the high court, and its dominant far-right majority, must be left alone.
Why take an unrelenting stance against new ethics rules for the Supreme Court in the midst of multiple Supreme Court ethics controversies? What are Republicans so afraid of?
During yesterday’s process, GOP members clung to one underlying point: The justices must be allowed to police themselves without interference. Congress might have the authority to create new limits, they said, but that power must be ignored so that justices can decide on their own what, if anything, to do. That might be a more compelling pitch if the justices have proven themselves capable of creating their own rules. But that hasn’t happened. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the justices have spent years considering “an internal plan” for the court’s first-ever code of conduct, but those efforts have “stalled” due to deep divisions among the justices themselves. That in turn leaves senators with a choice: They can sit passively as an ineffective status quo continues to generate controversies that further undermine public confidence in the court as an institution, or they create sensible rules for the justices to follow. The fact that Republicans are unanimous in their support for the former is tough to explain and even tougher to defend.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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