The Supreme Court indicated Monday it will adopt a code of conduct amid heightened scrutiny over the high court’s standards when it comes to undisclosed gifts and trips. In a statement released alo…
This was always going to be toothless. There is no legal method for the Chief Justice or any associate Justice or anyone on staff to enforce compliance. All it could ever do is be a canary in the coal mine for impeachment.
And unfortunately, besides impeachment, I’m not sure there’s any other tool the Congress has to enforce compliance or punishment onto the Supreme Court either. Unless they’re willing to push through a Constitutional amendment.
I’ve heard people say that they can bind another co-equal branch of government with normal legislation because they do the same to the executive branch, but ultimately that’s generally in cooperation with the judicial branch. In some situations the judicial branch has sided with the executive branch, such as executive privilege. In the case of Congress directly trying to impose this on the judiciary the Supreme Court could and probably would strike it down. The only help the executive could offer is of the “They’ve made their decision now let them enforce it.” sort. Ultimately that’s living in a Constitutional crisis and at that point why do any of the principles behind our government matter?
The only other option I see would be passing a code of ethics and then using their Constitutional power to shield that law from the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. However that’s shaky as a state could sue over it and automatically get the case in under the court’s original jurisdiction which cannot be limited.
This article does a pretty good job of going over the important parts of Article 2 of the US judicial code and talks about how Congress could regulate the Supreme Court as it does all other Federal courts. It would just take appointing an inspector general to enforce article 2 that already exist for lower courts.
The regulation would still maintain an independent decisional authority in the same vein is how they regulate the number of justices currently on the Supreme Court. The regulation itself would have nothing to do with the way that the justices reach their decisions, but would only cover their conduct outside of the court. The law is already in place, Congress just hasn’t put the mechanism in place to enforce it.
That being said, they can’t even pass resolutions in order to stop the time change which has near unanimous support across the population and all our other branches of government. It’s my firm belief that the opposite of pro is con, so the opposite of progress must be…
This was always going to be toothless. There is no legal method for the Chief Justice or any associate Justice or anyone on staff to enforce compliance. All it could ever do is be a canary in the coal mine for impeachment.
And unfortunately, besides impeachment, I’m not sure there’s any other tool the Congress has to enforce compliance or punishment onto the Supreme Court either. Unless they’re willing to push through a Constitutional amendment.
I’ve heard people say that they can bind another co-equal branch of government with normal legislation because they do the same to the executive branch, but ultimately that’s generally in cooperation with the judicial branch. In some situations the judicial branch has sided with the executive branch, such as executive privilege. In the case of Congress directly trying to impose this on the judiciary the Supreme Court could and probably would strike it down. The only help the executive could offer is of the “They’ve made their decision now let them enforce it.” sort. Ultimately that’s living in a Constitutional crisis and at that point why do any of the principles behind our government matter?
The only other option I see would be passing a code of ethics and then using their Constitutional power to shield that law from the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. However that’s shaky as a state could sue over it and automatically get the case in under the court’s original jurisdiction which cannot be limited.
The Supreme Court has adopted its first code of ethics - https://one.npr.org/i/1212836705:1212836706
This article does a pretty good job of going over the important parts of Article 2 of the US judicial code and talks about how Congress could regulate the Supreme Court as it does all other Federal courts. It would just take appointing an inspector general to enforce article 2 that already exist for lower courts.
The regulation would still maintain an independent decisional authority in the same vein is how they regulate the number of justices currently on the Supreme Court. The regulation itself would have nothing to do with the way that the justices reach their decisions, but would only cover their conduct outside of the court. The law is already in place, Congress just hasn’t put the mechanism in place to enforce it.
That being said, they can’t even pass resolutions in order to stop the time change which has near unanimous support across the population and all our other branches of government. It’s my firm belief that the opposite of pro is con, so the opposite of progress must be…
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