Our ethically permissive Supreme Court

[mgc1961]

It is “do-as-I-say, not what-I-do” time at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a majority opinion in a 2009 case involving the conflict of interest of a state Supreme Court justice in West Virginia, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

Courts, in our system, elaborate principles of law in the course of resolving disputes. The power and the prerogative of a court to perform this function rest, in the end, upon the respect accorded to its judgments. The citizen’s respect for judgments depends in turn upon the issuing court’s absolute probity. Judicial integrity is, in consequence, a state interest of the highest order.

By that standard, the Supreme Court needs to review the actions of three of its own members. And if the courts won’t act, Congress should.

As Common Cause and Alliance for Justice have documented, the past activities of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia raise questions about the propriety of some of their extracurricular experiences. In September, the two groups, along with more than 100 law professors and ethicists, called upon Congress to require the nine justices of the high court to apply to themselves the existing ethical code of conduct rules covering all other federal judges, and to require them to publicly provide valid reasons rejecting recusal for alleged conflicts of interests. As the professors pointed out, the Supreme Court now has no policy on recusal. The justices simply decide for themselves if they have a conflict of interest.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/time_to_clean_up_the_supreme_court/singleton/

[qb]

1. SCOTUS is now a tool of the oligarchy. If it enriches the powerful, it passes.

Legality has nothing to do with it any more.

[socialindependocrat]

2. Look at the vote balance..

Why is it that there are so many 5-4 votes.

If they voted, based on the law of the land,
they would have more 8-1 and 7-2 votes

If the supreme court members made decisions based on current laws
there would be no need to worry if they were liberal or conservative.

Just another part of the government gone bad....
So now we have the legislative branch and the judicial branch
bought out by the wealthy - where do we go from here folks??!!

[Doctor_J]

4. My prediction

Choose your favorite 1%er

[bemildred]

3. "Our corrupt Supreme Court" is more like it.

The arguments get more weasely and less principled as the years go by, and nobody does anything about it.