ProPublica's investigation into years' worth of expensive gifts, luxury travel and more from long-time GOP donor Harlan Crow to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, should be a wake-up call on the need for stronger ethics rules on the nation's highest court.
What we got instead was the usual Team Red, Team Blue nonsense that only erodes everyone else's faith in the political process.
Perhaps that's to be expected. Crow's bankrolling of many of the right's institutions and individuals built a constituency for him that has every incentive to defend his actions. As for Thomas, he's the conservative rock that has refused to move in the face of decades of extraordinary attacks from the left and its hangers-on. The ProPublica piece was just one more episode in that long, ugly chain of slanders.
On the left, it was a clear-cut case of graft, and grifting, a stunning example (complete with pictures) of the deep rot inside the right as a whole, the Supreme Court as an institution and Thomas in particular.
And that's before we got the stories about Mr. Crow's bizarre collection of Nazi artifacts.
Let's stay focused, shall we?
The Supreme Court is supposed to adhere to stricter disclosure guidelines on personal gifts, travel, and more, that recently took effect. Thomas said he was told he didn't have to disclose such largesse because it was from a close personal friend.
Try using that excuse on your taxes sometime and see what happens.
It's clear that some, if not all, of what Thomas got from Crow would fall under the new disclosure rules. But the Supreme Court, as the final arbiter of the rules, gets to decide how closely it will follow them. Thomas says he will follow the new rules.
All fine and good.
But there's the larger issue about potential conflicts of interest that may arise between individual justices, their generous gift-givers and cases before the court. In an NPR interview, Northwestern University Law professor emeritus Steven Lubet said:
The Supreme Court is the only court in the United States that has never adopted a written code of ethics. Every other court has a written code. The U.S. Supreme Court has strenuously resisted announcing what its own standards of ethics are. That should be remedied. They should adopt a code of conduct. At the very least, this will let the public know what the justices expect of themselves, and there will be transparency that we have not had in the past.
That is what we should take away from this entire episode. The Supreme Court absolutely must be held to a written, enforceable ethics standard. That it doesn't raises questions about the institution, the quality of justice, perhaps even its legitimacy.
Yes, ethics is dull, tedious, and of little interest to anyone outside the ethics office. But as James Madison wisely wrote in Federalist No. 51:
But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
It's still true…and applies to Supreme Court justices, too.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Cry me a river.Everyone likes favors, ,u just won’t admit it.Good friends are hard to come by,.u probably wished u had a few.There is nothing wrong here,quit your whining.
So you don’t believe that what’s fair for the goose is good for the gander, do you? And please learn how to write cogently.
Thomas and too many others are benefitting from – and our society and culture continue to be damaged by – the lowering of standards to the point where so many people are oblivious to the fact that govt employees accepting gifts (from people who are their “friends” because they are govt employees) is WRONG. Instead we have people running around believing that the worst sorts of crimes are using contraception, having an abortion or using the “wrong” pronouns!
The simple FACT is that the Supreme Court should be following the same rules as any other federal courts and the federal govt as a whole that clearly puts Thomas’ behavior way outside the bounds. He claims to be a conservative but he helps himself to the gravy train that liberals feel themselves entitled to.
Power corrupts – no joke.
Does gifting Judges give favorable outcome of cases?
“Favorable” in the eyes of the gifters, absolutely. They can deny it all they want but Thomas would be no “dear friend” of this megadonor if Thomas was not in a position of power. Just like Chinese Communists don’t give out millions in cash to people whose last name is not “Biden.”