Supreme Court’s Roberts won’t testify to Senate, offers ethics statement

There did not seem to be new proposals or guidelines in the statement, which Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) immediately labeled insufficient, noting recent revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas that he said illustrate the need for more scrutiny.

“I am surprised that the Chief Justice’s recounting of existing legal standards of ethics suggests current law is adequate and ignores the obvious,” Durbin said in a statement. “The actions of one Justice, including trips on yachts and private jets, were not reported to the public. That same Justice failed to disclose the sale of properties he partly owned to a party with interests before the Supreme Court.”

“It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,” Durbin’s statement continued.

Justice Thomas has reported receiving only two gifts since 2004

Durbin has scheduled a committee hearing for May 2. But Roberts said in the letter that he will not attend.

“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” Roberts wrote. He said chief justices have attended congressional committees only a handful of times in history, often to speak on “mundane” topics.

Emphasizing the separation of powers argument, Roberts noted that no president has ever testified before the Senate committee, and only three had ever appeared before congressional committees.

Durbin said the invitation to Roberts or his designate was “an attempt to include the Court in this discussion. But make no mistake: Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not.”

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s disclosure forms include an unusual redaction

The topic has taken on partisan dimensions, with many Republicans — including some on Durbin’s committee — dismissing recent news reports on the justices and questions about court ethics as attempts to hurt the Supreme Court’s credibility at a time when conservative justices have a super majority.

It would be hard to find bipartisan agreement in Congress to impose ethical standards that the justices themselves do not want.

The statement of ethics Roberts attached to his letter said the justices consult a wide range of laws and ethical canons in deciding how to conduct themselves.

“They may turn to judicial opinions, treatises, scholarly articles, disciplinary 9 decisions, and the historical practice of the Court and the federal judiciary,” said the statement, signed by all nine members of the court. “They may also seek advice from the Court’s Legal Office and from their colleagues.”

The statement said that since 1991, “Justices have followed the financial disclosure requirements and limitations on gifts, outside earned income, outside employment, and honoraria. They file the same annual financial disclosure reports as other federal judges.”

It said those reports disclose “Justices’ non-governmental income, investments, gifts, and reimbursements from third parties.”

The biggest recent controversy at the court includes a ProPublica report that Thomas accepted trips around the globe for more than two decades, including travel on a superyacht and private jet, from his billionaire friend Harlan Crow, a Dallas business executive and influential donor to causes related to the law and judiciary. The news site later reported Crow had purchased the home of Thomas’s mother, where she still resides, with plans to one day turn it into a museum.

Thomas did not report the trips or the property sale on his annual disclosure form.

The justice has not responded to questions about the home sale. About the trips, he said in a statement: “Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

In their ethics statement, the members of the court noted the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Financial Disclosure “just last month, . . . provided clarification on the scope of the personal hospitality’ exemption to the disclosure rules.”