Michael J. Broyde, Bloomberg Law; The Supreme Court’s Ethics Problem Has a Pretty Easy Solution
"Much has been written on the ethical problems facing the Supreme Court. Writers fixate mostly on the lack of an ethics code and the conduct of specific justices.
Yet in this discussion, many have missed something key: These aren’t the real issues. In fact, US law already has the basic outlines of an ethics code. Federal law states directly that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
The statute, if applied uniformly and properly, solves nearly all the issues that have recently plagued the high court’s image by making the rules themselves clear.
Not only does the statute explicitly cover the justices, but every sitting justice also has accepted that the statute governs them, as noted in many cases and in the recent letter about ethics signed by the nine.
The real issue when it comes to the court’s ethical problems concerns this statute’s implementation."
