In response to the reports that Supreme Court justcie Alito leaked the court’s decsion abortion calls two Democratic Senators have pressed the court for information….
They have been rebuffed….
It would seem that the court is beyond answering quesrtions about possible problems it has among its members?
Who checks on the nations High Court?
A lawyer for the Supreme Court dismissed questions about ethics issues at the court in a terse reply to a letter from two top congressional Democrats on Monday.
Supreme Court legal counsel Ethan Torrey replied to the inquiry from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), each in charge of oversight of the courts in their respective chambers.
The two congressional investigators had pressed Chief Justice John Roberts to answer questions about how the court handles ethical breaches after news reports revealed a pressure campaign by the Christian conservative group Faith & Action, at the time run by Rev. Rob Schenck, that allegedly resulted in Justice Samuel Alito revealing the outcome of his 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby prior to its release.
Torrey did not answer any of Whitehouse and Johnson’s questions regarding ongoing or potential ethics inquiries into the court’s leaked draft opinionoverturning Roe v. Wade, or into Alito’s alleged leak of the Hobby Lobby outcome. Nor did he say which justices received gifts as part of the religious right pressure campaign.
Torrey instead takes the tone of a defense counsel stonewalling an investigative body.
“There is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethical standards,” he wrote….
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“If the Court … is not willing to undertake fact-finding inquiries into possible ethics violations that leaves Congress as the only forum,” Whitehouse and Johnson asserted in their November letter.
And in their joint statement issued on Tuesday, the two lawmakers restated their belief that the court lacks credibility to police itself absent a legally binding ethics code and complaint process.
“Unlike all other federal courts, there is no formal process for complaints; it took a Senator’s and a Congressman’s repeated letters to galvanize a response,” they wrote. “Unlike all other federal courts, there is no formal process for fact-finding inquiry.”
“That absence of independence violates the ancient maxim, nemo judex in sua causa: no one should judge their own cause,” they added. “These multiple failures of orderly process are peculiar, coming from the highest Court in the land. Procedure is the bone structure of justice.”
While Johnson will not remain chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing the courts after Republicans won control of the chamber, Whitehouse will remain in charge of the same Senate subcommittee in the next Congress….
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Background: After the Times published the story, Whitehouse and Johnson (D-Ga.) joined Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in calling for legislation requiring a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices.
- The allegation over the leaked 2014 decision came after the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which was also written by Alito — was leaked in May.
- That opinion officially overturned Roe v. Wade and effectively ended all federal protections on abortion in June.
- In October, Alito called the leak of the Dobbs decision a “grave betrayal of trust by somebody” and said it made the court’s conservative justices “targets for assassination.”
Go deeper: Here are 5 Supreme Court cases to watch this term
Note…
The US Supreme Court does get its budget money from Congress….