US Senate Democrats pursue Supreme Court ethics legislation

ATQ@lemm.ee to politics @lemmy.world – 677 points – US Senate Democrats pursue Supreme Court ethics legislation
reuters.com

Senate Democrats are pursuing legislation this week that would set a binding ethics code for the U.S. Supreme Court following revelations that some conservative justices have failed to disclose luxury trips and real estate transactions - a measure facing an uphill battle thanks to Republican opposition.

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So, I guess my question is, will this have any teeth? Suppose Clarence just says "fuck it" and fails to recuse himself when he should? What then? Does this law permit for real consequences, or is it just going to be an extra stern finger wagging?

Beyond that, what's to say the court doesn't just declare it unconstitutional.

We're well past them pretending they don't legislate from the bench, they're just striking down or upholding laws that they like at this point.

Clarence exhales profoundly letting out hooray as the 6000$ bourbon spills out his lower lip in small drops "Haha I'm in for life 😂😂😂"

Sorry I'm kind of tipsy 🥴

Unlikely to have legal teeth. For one, it's actually facially unconstitutional. First, the vesting clause of Article III states that the judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court. It also expresses that Congress may establish other courts. There's a statutory interpretation canon, expressio unius est exclusio alterius that essentially says that if you are speaking of a set of things ("courts") and say that something applies (congressional discretion) to a specific subset ("lower courts"), it implies that the remainder of that subset ("the supreme court") is exempt (cannot be regulated by congress).

Second, there's arguably already a constitutional process for regulating the ethics of SCOTUS ("good behavior"); however, the Constitution is silent on how it's enforced and in that vacuum SCOTUS's position is likely to be that they self-regulate.

I think, however, the public spectacle of it does have value. For one, SCOTUS (and the Republicans) are very concerned with the court losing legitimacy and a genuine consensus emerging that the court ought to be overhauled- whether that's Whitehouse's bill or a packing plan. It would be great propaganda for a future election for Democrats to say "hey, stop taking bribes" to justices currently taking bribes and for the court not to agree and say "you're right, no taking bribes" but instead to say "fuck you, you can't tell us what to do but also we're not taking bribes we promise".

Whitehouse's strategy here, especially since this would never pass the House, is to offer this as ammunition to Democrats running in 2024 showcasing the corruption of the Republican party.

Every 4 years the people should hold a vote of no confidence on the supreme court, and if they fail we feed them to the lions in Dodger stadium.

Dodger stadium has low fences. As a Red Sox fan I suggest throwing them off the Monster towards the lions instead. There’s even seats on it to watch them try and scrabble up

I know baseball players have appetites, but human flesh?

We can give them to the Detroit Lions maybe.

That's the best question. Clarence Thomas shouldn't have been able to openly flaunt his corruption for decades, but he has. Is this just going to be more firm hand-wringing by the Dems with no enforcement mechanism whatsoever? At that point, it would be better to just recognize the court as illegitimate in the public eye as opposed to giving the false sense that it is in anyway ethical.

It doesn't necessarily need to have teeth since the court has no enforcement mechanism when declaring something unconstitutional. Instead of putting teeth into the law itself, one could argue that if justices were found to be "unethical" it reduces the likelihood that that judges decision is unbiased and opens the door to govt just ignorimg the cases in which an unethical judge tips the scale on which side makes up the majority of the court....

Still doubt any of that happens though because Dems are the govt now

The Dems are unlikely to straight up just ignore SCOTUS rulings. With all that's happened in the last 6 years, I believe the Republicans absolutely would ignore a SCOTUS ruling, and they would be FAR more likely to just ignore SCOTUS altogether if the Dems ignored the SCOTUS student loan forgiveness ruling.

What is more likely, would be the Dems/Biden reduce payments to some minimal amount like $1/mo and place all student loans at a negative interest rate, since the powers to set payment amounts and interest rates were confirmed by the SCOTUS ruling.

The end result would be something like 'If you've paid the principal balance, you're done. If your loans have lasted 10+ years, you're done. If you cannot afford to pay, pay us the $1/mo and eventually your balance will get to $0 because it has been set to a negative interest rate, so you're done.'

This strategy is a long term play by the Dems, because the public will be made extremely aware that the next Republican president or Republican majority Congress will force them to pay those loans, with interest. The voters will know instantly they shouldn't vote Red. Even if they were raised Republican, if you knew voting Red would mean you owe the government $10,000 as soon as that person takes office, you're unlikely to vote Red. That would be a grand slam Dark Brandon move.

The courts have no way to enforce their rulings directly. Nothing is stopping Biden from ignoring them except for norms and the the real shitstorm it would cause.

I don't know about shit storm. Student loan forgiveness was clearly within the presidential powers in the HEROES Act of 2003. Loan forgiveness is also overwhelmingly popular with the voters on both sides of the aisle. Since the SC has no teeth to enforce rulings, Biden could just wait until a month after reelection and do it anyway, with near-zero consequences. Nobody is coming for him for making them not owe $10,000, especially since the plaintiffs in the SC case were unwilling, unwitting, and could not prove any harm.

I say that under the assumption Biden wouldn't lose to another candidate, and the Democrats retain at least one of the Congressional Chambers. In this fucky timeline, who knows what the USA will look like in 2 years

The shit storm would be over ignoring the supreme court, not loan forgiveness.

Technically, if it does end up getting passed, it will theoretically have teeth. But then the Tribunal of Six will probably just say “it’s unconstitutional to hold us accountable”.

At that point, someone’s bound to infer something creative from the statement “supreme court justices are appointed for life” sooner or later.

My point being: if you halt any and all means of civil recourse that your citizens have, someone is going to dislike that enough that they will find a way around it that you will not like.

It's the Democrats. Finger wagging is all they've got.

Hah. Clearly this should happen, but I hope the irony of self-enriching congress lecturing others about ethics isn’t lost on anyone.

I know it's not the point you were making, but the Senate is a different body than Congress

Not...really. It's the supposed to be the more ethical, upstanding half of Congress, with the popular House of Representatives constituting the deplorable half.

So, regardless of which side of Congress is referring to, or both sides, it doesn't matter: their self-enrichment undermines their stance on ethics. It's not like Manchin, a Senator, also hasn't benefited from the largesse of billionaires.

Again, I understand your point, but Congress is literally not the Senate...

What do you think Congress is?

The governing body made up by congressmen as opposed to senators

Well you are not correct. Congress is the legislative branch, made up of the House of Representatives (referred to as representatives or congressmen like you said) and the Senate (referred to as senators).

The supreme Court also needs to be expanded and repaired by packing in liberal judges until the makeup of the court reflects the values of the majority of the country.

Term limits are a great way to mitigate effects of judges. While an opposing party may control it for a time, it will end. Expansion does nothing to solve this, but may temporarily appear to. Until again, an opposing party elects judges to fill those seats you just added.

There should be term & age limits on all our representatives.

so what happens when republicans take back the Senate and the presidency and then add like 10 conservative justices to balance out the liberal ones

Not going to stop until we're all supreme court judges

i am going to declare the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act of 2018 to be unconstitutional

Then we return to the situation we are in right now. But the supreme court will not be whatever it is right now at least for a while

And when Republicans have control they pack it in their favor?

They already doing it. They were doing it for years already. They will not stop doing it until there will be some ethical oversight that can actually do something

Seriously, the point of having 3 supposedly co-equal branches is so each has oversight. You can't let this dereliction of duty go unchallenged or we have to scrap the whole thing.

I mean…. We have to scrap the whole thing. We all know it. Let’s stop dancing around it and start figuring out what the next thing is.

I've been saying this for a long while. We need a new constitution at this point, and that is OK. The founders knew this, and also took time to point out that it will be ugly, just like it was for them. The shit show we have now is enough to make me lean into antinatalism, which is a stance I never could have imagined as a younger person.

Reminds me of this quote I came across the other day about Marbury v Madison

Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Smith Adams, September 11, 1804, "but the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature & executive also in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch."

Dissolve the court. Arrest Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito and Kavanaugh. Investigate everyone else, and if they took so much as a stick of gum from someone who had business before the court arrest them too. Symbolic bills dying in committee will not stop the court from being the bought & paid for dictator that we thought they were trying to put in the white house.

I complete agree with you, but dissolving the court would probably lead to a full-on civil war

they threaten civil war every time the waiter forgets their ranch dressing. it's time to stop letting that empty threat stop us from being a free and democratic country.

If the US was another country they’d call it a 3rd world mess, invade it for the oil in Alaska and bring democratic laws to it. And probably kill 100k civilians on the way.

Be real for a sec…

100k is way too low of a number.

The rest of the 5mil were combatants because male and over 8 years old.

Guys who administer constituinal law having hard time complying with the basic bar rules... Such as conflict of interest and kick backs. I thought veneer of impropriety was the the theshldhold.

Where they barred anyway? Asking for a friend

Fuck it. Flood the Court with justices until it pops.

Ohh I was excited when you said flood the court. But you meant appoint more people

No no, they meant flood it with water. I'll get the fire hoses.

Fire these hosers? Yeah, that's a first step.

God we are so fucking far past the point where this will matter. We need to give up the idea that we can still patch our broken governmental system with things that rely on people coming together and agreeing that some things are just bad. The right will defend anything if defending it can give them more power. This legislation would probably be used to kick a democratic judge off for "ethics violations" like giving food to the homeless somewhere that it's been made illegal before it was used to target republican judges guilty of rape, lying under oath, and bribery.

"Sorry, we heard Judge ______ handed a bottle of water to someone in a GA election line, gotta go!"

wouldn't that require quite a bit of bipartisan support?

It would. And realistically you’d never expect todays ‘Pubs to be pro honesty or ethics so the chances of legislation to that effect passing is quiet low.

probably as likely as a snowball's chance in Hell.

Well, if long COVID eventually manages to drag Senator Inhofe into hell, you can be assured he'll bring a snowball with him.