US Supreme Court's Roberts hears key Democrat's call for enforceable ethics code; Reuters, September 17, 2024

Nate Raymond, Reuters;  US Supreme Court's Roberts hears key Democrat's call for enforceable ethics code

"The Democratic chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday argued during a closed-door federal judiciary meeting attended by Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts that the high court's recently-adopted ethical code of conduct falls short and needs a means of enforcement, a person familiar with the matter said.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois spoke as one of several lawmakers invited to attend the semi-annual meeting of the U.S. Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary's top policymaking body, which Roberts heads."

Justices Would Get Ethics Code Under New Democrat Bill; The National Law Journal, Janaury 7, 2019

Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal; 

Justices Would Get Ethics Code Under New Democrat Bill

The bill is the latest of repeated efforts by Congress to impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court, which is exempt from the code first promulgated in 1973 by the Judicial Conference.

 

"The first bill introduced by the Democratic-led House of Representatives last week contains a provision that would include U.S. Supreme Court justices for the first time in a newly created code of conduct.

If passed, the provision could raise separation-of-powers issues and would likely irritate the high court, which covets its independence and its special status under the Constitution. The provision could also revive the controversy over ethics complaints against Justice Brett Kavanaugh that were dismissed last month because he is now on the Supreme Court, outside the purview of existing judicial ethics rules.

H.R. 1, dubbed the “For the People Act,” is a wide-ranging bill that covers issues of transparency, corruption, ethics and campaign finance reform."