The Supreme Court’s excuses for ethics violations insult our intelligence; The Hill, July 25, 2023

 STEVEN LUBET, The Hill; The Supreme Court’s excuses for ethics violations insult our intelligence

"The three justices’ hollow rationalizations display a patronizing expectation that the public will ultimately buy whatever they say, no matter how implausible. 

But to paraphrase the late Justice Robert Jackson: Supreme Court justices do not get the last word because they are infallible; they only believe themselves infallible because they get the last word. When it comes to judicial ethics, that has to change."

Don’t downplay Sonia Sotomayor’s poor conduct. Fix it.; MSNBC, July 13, 2023

 Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC ; Don’t downplay Sonia Sotomayor’s poor conduct. Fix it.

"The response from some liberal commentators has been to downplay the matter. They correctly point out that Sotomayor’s impropriety is minor in comparison to recent ethics scandals involving fellow Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who have been lavished with vacations and gifts from billionaire GOP activists. But a purely comparative lens distracts from the problem. Once again we’re seeing that the Supreme Court has no guardrails against exploitation of power, whether large or small, liberal justice or conservative. And that makes ethics reform at the court even more necessary...

On yet another occasion, an aide said the number of books a library had purchased in advance of an event was “definitely not enough,” prompting library staff members to push back by saying it was a book publisher and bookseller matter...

Sotomayor’s recently revealed conduct isn’t even close to the worst of the things we’ve learned about how justices have inappropriately used their power. But an error is an error. That it’s a liberal Supreme Court justice doesn’t make me more inclined to dismiss it — it makes me less so: I expect more from people whose ideology should make them more vigilant against misuse of power. It’s a reminder that we need rules rather than blind trust to protect the public. The solution here is not to point the finger elsewhere, but to call with even more urgency for Supreme Court ethics reform through Congress."

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books; AP, July 11, 2023

BRIAN SLODYSKO AND ERIC TUCKER, AP; Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books

"Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009. Details of those events, largely out of public view, were obtained by The Associated Press through more than 100 open records requests to public institutions. The resulting tens of thousands of pages of documents offer a rare look at Sotomayor and her fellow justices beyond their official duties.

In her case, the documents reveal repeated examples of taxpayer-funded court staff performing tasks for the justice’s book ventures, which workers in other branches of government are barred from doing. But when it comes to promoting her literary career, Sotomayor is free to do what other government officials cannot because the Supreme Court does not have a formal code of conduct, leaving the nine justices to largely write and enforce their own rules.

“This is one of the most basic tenets of ethics laws that protects taxpayer dollars from misuse,” said Kedric Payne, a former deputy chief counsel at the Office of Congressional Ethics and current general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Washington. “The problem at the Supreme Court is there’s no one there to say whether this is wrong.”"