Can America’s Supreme Court police itself?
OTHER THAN receiving the occasional desk ornament or “coffee and doughnuts”, federal employees in America are barred from accepting gifts worth more than $20 from anyone but friends and family. They must refuse all gifts that “would not have been given had the employee not held the status, authority or duties” of his position. They are advised to consider declining even gifts valued at less than $20 that might prompt a reasonable person to “question the employee’s integrity or impartiality”. Similar strictures to promote public confidence apply to employees of the judicial branch, including all district and circuit-court judges.
But they do not constrain the nine justices of the Supreme Court. The only ethical requirements that apply to America’s nine most powerful jurists are found in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, an anti-corruption law passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The law requires public officials to disclose in an annual report certain information about their investments, outside income (currently capped at $30,000 a year for teaching, but unlimited when it comes to books) and gifts. It also requires some financial data related to the justices’ immediate family.
In June ProPublica, an investigative outlet, reported that in 2008 Justice Samuel Alito omitted to log a trip on a private jet to Alaska that was paid for by a billionaire Republican donor who would later bring cases to the Supreme Court. In April ProPublica published details that Harlan Crow, a billionaire property developer, collector of memorabilia and noted donor to conservative causes, had been hosting Justice Clarence Thomas on his plane and yacht for decades. The website later reported that Mr Crow bought a home Justice Thomas owned in Georgia and paid private-school tuition for his great-nephew.
2023-09-07 06:39:13
Original from www.economist.com
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