Sonny Perdue is sworn in as the 31st Secretary of Agriculture by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with his wife Mary and family April 25, 2017, at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.. Photo by Preston Keres
It would be easy to dismiss the accusations hurled at Clarence Thomas as “too thin to matter.” But don’t do that, advises the editors of the WSJ. That, they say, would be a mistake.
This is a political project, and hyped accusations will continue to be asserted as if they are serious.
“Ethics” is a time-honored political weapon in Washington, and it’s being used now against the Court because conservatives have a majority that is cleaning up some of the legal mistakes of recent decades. It has sent abortion policy back to the states (to the political benefit of Democrats in most places), expanded protections for the Bill of Rights, and is slowly restoring constitutional guardrails on the administrative state. Most of all, the Court is no longer a backstop legislature for progressives to impose policies they can’t get through Congress.
The key here is that the claims have been triggered by easily debunked reports about the conservative Justices,” especially claims that Justice Thomas didn’t properly disclose certain financial transactions.”
Shameless Hypocrisy
It’s interesting that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t get the same attention when she revised her financial disclosures in 2022.
Her oversights were far more extensive than Justice Thomas’s. There was also no outcry in 2020 when Justice Sonia Sotomayor amended her financial disclosures after the group Fix the Court found that she hadn’t disclosed reimbursement for trips to universities.
Nor was there an uproar when the OpenSecrets website reported in 2019 that former Justice Stephen Breyer was reimbursed for trips some 219 times from 2004-2018. Some of those trips were supported by the wealthy Pritzker family. There are other examples involving liberal Justices.
The WSJ editors want to be clear: “we believe none of these Justices did anything wrong.”
Justice Thomas did nothing wrong in having a rich friend in Harlan Crow or a minor oversight on one of his disclosure forms.
Democrats didn’t mind any of this when they agreed with the Court’s opinions on gay marriage, abortion, or restraining Donald Trump.
How judicious of Chief Justice John Roberts to decline the honor and not to accept the invitation to appear last week so Democrats could attract TV cameras.
In his reply to Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, [the Chief Justice] also submitted a lengthy “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” that the Justices abide by. It’s an extensive list of laws and rules, and the Justices voluntarily follow the substance of Judicial Conference regulations. All nine Justices signed the statement.
It is the WSJ editors’s opinion that it is a bad idea for senators to impose a new ethical code on the Justices, with an outside monitor to enforce it … and unconstitutional, to boot.
It would make the Court—an independent branch of government—answerable to an agent of Congress. The monitor would inevitably become a political weapon to attack unpopular Justices and intimidate the Court.
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