The court issued a 14-page document that included five canons of conduct in addition to lengthy commentary.
“The undersigned justices are promulgating this Code of Conduct to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the Members of the Court,” the justices said in an attached statement.
Most of the rules are not new, the statement said, but the lack of a published code “has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,” the statement added.
Among other things the code requires justices to “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary” and “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.”
[Presumably this is meant to head off Dick Durbin’s attempts to usurp the court’s authority as an independent branch to police itself. Is that enough to pre-empt Durbin and transform this into “old news”? I’m not sure Democrats looking for revenge over Dobbs will be so easily put off, but at least the justices can claim that they are responsive to criticism from the legislative branch. — Ed]
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