ProPublica’s reporting revealing Justice Clarence Thomas accepted tens of thousands of dollars in gifts from a Texas billionaire without disclosing them has renewed calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a code of ethics. So far there isn’t one.
Federal laws, some of which were recently tightened, require Supreme Court justices to report gifts valued at more than a few hundred dollars. But there are no official ethics standards for the Supreme Court as there are for lower courts.said that across two decades, Thomas and his wife, Ginni, took gifts from Harlan Crow, a conservative billionaire based in Dallas, that included private jet and yacht travel to destinations including the Adirondacks and Indonesia.
Justices and other officials must, by federal law, disclose the details of most real estate sales exceeding $1,000.American Bar Association "How do you explain to the American people when they discover that every part of our government structure, all the other agencies, have codes of conduct, but the United States Supreme Court does not?" said James Williams, the Washington state delegate to the American Bar Association, who introduced a resolution to have the court adopt an ethics code.
"I think would send a message that the justices are not above the law, nor are they too important or special to adopt the types of rules and practices that govern the conduct of every other judge in the country," Roth said.in 1973. It asks judges to uphold canons regarding integrity and independence; avoiding impropriety; fairness and impartiality and extrajudicial activities. It also asks judges to refrain from political activity.
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