Senate Judiciary Committee Report Calls for Ethics Changes at Supreme Court

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin says the high court ‘is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making.’

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) speaks during a hearing reviewing the president’s fiscal year 2024 budget request for the National Guard and Reserve in Washington on June 1, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Senate Judiciary Committee urged Congress to require the Supreme Court to enforce judicial ethical standards in an investigative report that was released on Dec. 21.

Action on the report seems unlikely as Republicans gear up to assume control of the Senate next month. Republican leadership opposes the Democrat-sponsored court reform proposals.

Congressional Democrats have been demanding reforms in recent years as they have grown increasingly incensed by Supreme Court rulings they disagree with on issues such as abortion, gun rights, environmental policy, and the power of the administrative state.

Republicans say the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act (SCERT) is unconstitutional and motivated by a partisan animus. The bill, introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), would require the court to adopt a binding code of conduct that would be enforced by a panel of lower court judges empowered to investigate complaints against the justices and order disciplinary actions.

Justices have publicly disagreed on whether Congress has constitutional authority to regulate the court.

Justice Samuel Alito said last year that Congress can’t do it.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court”—the Constitution did, he said. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Days later, Justice Elena Kagan said the opposite at a conference in Oregon.

 “It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to checks and balances from anybody else. We’re not imperial,” she said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill on a party-line vote in July 2023 but it has since been stalled.

The 921-page report by the panel’s Democrat majority, which has been sharply critical of the high court—especially after President-elect Donald Trump added three conservative-leaning justices to the court in his first term—found that some justices are willing to violate federal judicial ethics laws and that the Judicial Conference of the United States, a body created by Congress, fails to take “ethical misconduct complaints against the justices seriously.”

The report, in the works for two years, also stated that the court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, has failed to properly prepare justices’ financial disclosures or to review recusals in pending cases.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, criticized the court in a statement released alongside the report.

“Now more than ever before, as a result of information gathered by subpoenas, we know the extent to which the Supreme Court is mired in an ethical crisis of its own making. Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest, it’s clear that the justices are losing the trust of the American people at the hands of a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”

The Supreme Court adopted its first-ever code of conduct in November 2023 but Democrats say it is toothless because it relies on voluntary compliance. They also say that code won’t fix a court they consider overly sympathetic to business interests and conservative causes.

The new report recommended that Congress develop and impose an enforceable code of conduct on the Supreme Court.

The report also said the Judicial Conference “must be reformed and its internal operations improved.” Doing this would require action by Congress, in addition to changes at the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The report criticized Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for allegedly failing to disclose gifts they received.

Thomas, who allegedly took in millions of dollars in gifts from friends including billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, “has accepted largesse from benefactors in amounts that have no comparison in modern American history.”

Alito allegedly violated federal law by not originally disclosing a 2008 fishing trip to Alaska underwritten by billionaire hedge fund magnate Paul Singer.

Both justices have denied wrongdoing, saying they complied with guidance in effect at the time that relied on a broad definition of “personal hospitality.”

Senate Republicans have countered that there is no evidence that any gifts the two justices received were related to cases before the Supreme Court.

Mark Paoletta, former general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump’s first administration and former counsel to then Vice President Mike Pence, said the committee unfairly targeted conservatives on the court for their rulings.

“This entire investigation was never about ‘ethics’ but about trying to undermine the Supreme Court because the Court is no longer handing down opinions implementing the Democrats’ political agenda,” Paoletta wrote on X the day before the report was released.

Thomas and Alito “complied with the laws, regulations, advice, and Judicial Conference rulings regarding the reporting of trips with friends,” he added.

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Paoletta to return to the role of general counsel for the OMB.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Supreme Court, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito for comment. No replies were received by publication time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.