The Supreme Court’s Growing Ethics Splits; The New Republic, September 12, 2023

Matt Ford, The New Republic; The Supreme Court’s Growing Ethics Splits

"A notable split is developing among the Supreme Court justices over the prospect of ethics reform, with two of the court’s nine members openly hostile to the reporting on ethics concerns...

In theory, eight of the justices could collectively decide to strip another justice of their vote in the most extreme circumstances. The Supreme Court took that extraordinary step just once in its history, when the other eight justices secretly agreed in 1975 to punt any case in which Justice William O. Douglas cast a deciding vote to the following term instead of handing down a ruling. Douglas, who was 76 years old at the time, was partially paralyzed by a series of strokes and refused to retire despite—or perhaps because of—his deteriorating mental condition, forcing the court’s hand. (He eventually stepped down that November.) Beyond that exceptional collective step, however, the individual justices have no ability to substantively check one another...

To that end, it’s not clear yet whether these public remarks fully reflect the stances that the justices are taking when talking amongst themselves. (As you may have gathered from a head count of the justices mentioned, not all of them have spoken publicly about it yet.) If this is the way the winds are blowing, however, then Thomas and Alito might find themselves in an uncomfortable position. It would be awkward, to say the least, for the two justices who’ve received the most scrutiny to be the ones most resistant to reform."