The Supreme Court is in Crisis, and it’s Their Own Fault.

Civics quiz! Who’s responsible for regulating the behavior of the Supreme Court? If you answered “The Supreme Court,” then congratulations: to the detriment of our social, legal, and political fabric, SCOTUS has no modern check on its power. Congress has abandoned its constitutional mandate to act as a check on the Court’s behavior, failing to recognize that they are meant to be equal branches of government, with equal say in Constitutional interpretation. Now, all Congress does in relation to the Supreme Court is confirm nominees across party lines. They’re not required to follow any ethics guidelines, and the financial disclosures they barely fill out are essentially just for fun. Compare this to any other branch of government, or even other members of the Judiciary: federal, state, and county judges all must abide by a strict code of ethics. Why are the glorified Harvard Law grads in robes any different? 

Public opinion of the Court is falling, and fast. Against the backdrop of hyperpartisan rulings, controversial appointment battles, and the recent slew of articles last spring revealing flagrant disrespect by the Justices of their duty to faithfully file financial disclosures, the Court seems to be in crisis. And it’s a crisis of their own making. A number of court watchers, myself included, see the sheer number of special favors these Justices received from countless “benefactors” as tantamount to corruption and influence peddling.  The sheer disregard for the law is throwing every decision made by these individuals, particularly in matters where these ‘friends’ may have had a stake, into question. 

There are just two Congressional laws regulating this behavior from the Court, both lacking any enforcement mechanism to maintain them. The first relates to conflicts of interest: in 1948, Congress amended the judicial recusal statute to include Justices of the Court, seemingly holding them to the same standards as judges, who must recuse themselves from a case should there be a potential conflict of personal interest. Since 1978, Congress has required Justices to disclose their financial holdings and other sources of income, but Justices to this day contend that this does not require them to disclose many of the ‘gifts’ they may receive, leading to today’s scandal. 

Though Justice Thomas was certainly the most covered in these recent discoveries, it’s important to emphasize that he is not alone in disgracing the Court with this behavior. Justices Rogers, Sotomayor, Alito, and even the deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were publicly excoriated for their behavior and lack of transparency as well, with countless reporters detailing the game these Washington insiders played: free vacations, checks for traveling speaking engagements, and close ‘friendships’ with billionaires and politicians, all acting as informal lobbyists to the Supreme Court.

Clarence Thomas once said, “… I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. […] I come from regular stock and I prefer that– I prefer being around that.” He’s a real man of the people. That’s why this quote originated in a documentary about his life produced by his billionaire BFF Harlan Crow. It’s also why he allowed Crow to treat him and his wife to luxury vacations for over 20 years. According to the landmark ProPublica report from April 2023 that initiated the media frenzy, Thomas “goes on cruises in far-flung locales on Crow’s yacht, flies on his private jet, and keeps company with Crow’s powerful friends at the billionaire’s private resort.” Just one of these trips’ costs exceeded $500,000, and it was not an outlier. This, coupled with the following revelations that GOP mega-donor Crow paid tuition for Thomas’s nephew (whom he cared for at the time) at an elite private school and purchased property from the Justice that his mother continued to reside in rent-free, must lead any rational observer to one conclusion: there is no possibility he was not influenced by this incestuous relationship. He failed to report each of these instances, and claimed he was not required to disclose these “gifts,” despite the aforementioned 1978 disclosure law explicitly stating that gifts of  “personal hospitality” are limited to food, lodging, and beverages, not travel; in fact, the law has direct provisions regarding the mandated reporting of in-kind travel ‘reimbursements’ or gifts, which Thomas knowingly ignored. For these Justices, it becomes clear that the law applies to everyone but themselves. 

Thomas’s violations of public trust go even deeper: in January 2022, he refused to recuse himself

from a case relating to the January 6th assault on the Capitol. Why would he need to recuse himself, you ask? First, we need to talk about Ginni. Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, is a staunch political activist who has been paid handsomely by a variety of Conservative legal institutions that do business with the Court, including The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. The case involved deciding whether Trump White House records would have to be turned over to the Congressional Committee charged with investigating January 6th. Curiously, Thomas was the only Justice to vote against mandating that disclosure. Soon after, those documents and other released texts revealed that Ginni had been strategizing with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on how to overturn the election, barraging him with texts like, “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” and “Sounds like Sydney [Powell] and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” For some inconceivable reason, Thomas didn’t want the public to read the wise words of his wife. 

Though we’ve spent a lot of time on Thomas, that in no way means the other Justices are off the hook. Clarence Thomas even said, in response to the ethics allegations, “Early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable.” [emphasis added] Let’s review what conduct his colleagues have deemed becoming of the highest Court in the United States. John Roberts came under fire after whistleblower documents revealed that his wife, Jane Roberts, made over ten million dollars over eight years in commission working as a high-end recruiter matching elite lawyers with top law firms, many of which have business before the Court. Certainly being the wife of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has enabled her to make connections in the exclusive world of Big Law, boosting her commissions beyond those of her colleagues. Roberts has also been criticized for the potential impact his wife’s political activism may have had on crucial social decisions since he was nominated as Chief Justice in 2005. Sonia Sotomayor has been ridiculed for her behavior on book tours, with the AP reporting that she’s used her taxpayer-funded staff on many occasions to pressure libraries and universities to purchase her books in advance of her speaking engagements, violating “one of the most basic tenets of ethics laws that protects taxpayer dollars from misuse,” according to one expert on the matter. Samuel Alito took the classic Thomas route by going on a luxury fishing trip with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, and failing to include this in his financial disclosure form. In 2014, Alito similarly did not recuse himself from a case directly involving Singer, and voted with the 7-1 majority in the billionaire’s favor, meaning he violated the only two rules that apply to the Court with a single relationship, killing two birds with one stone. 

Not included in this discussion are the truly countless trips these Justices take on the dime of elite political-legal institutions for speaking and teaching engagements, which, upon further investigation, seem to be paid vacations to curry favor with the Justices. For example, GMU’s Scalia Law School has recruited many Justices for teaching and speaking opportunities abroad, and the details of Neil Gorsuch’s involvement in one of these trips was the subject of an April release from the New York Times. In 2017, Gorsuch hand-selected the Italian city in which he planned to teach a short course; a handbook emailed to him by the Law School made it very clear that “his teaching responsibilities would be limited to the mornings, leaving plenty of time for excursions.” This behavior is not unique to this Justice, or even this era of the Court. Research from NYT also showed that, from 2004 to 2014, Antonin Scalia took 258 subsidized trips to locales including Switzerland and Ireland. Scalia took these trips so often that he was on one of them when he died. In 2016, Scalia passed away on a trip at a West Texas hunting lodge owned by a business executive whose company had recently had a case before the Court.

This behavior is unacceptable. It is immoral for public service jobs to become vehicles for elites to pursue self-enrichment. If these Justices are not satisfied with their salary of $274,000 a year, they need to retire from this job. To be on the highest court in the land is a mandate of public service that requires sacrifice and integrity, and these Justices in no way meet that standard. If they want us to respect their decisions and authority, they must first fulfill their end of the bargain.

The opinions expressed within this piece represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jefferson Independent.