{"id":12358,"date":"2023-12-06T15:19:12","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12358"},"modified":"2023-12-06T15:19:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T15:19:12","slug":"the-supreme-courts-new-ethics-code-is-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12358","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court\u2019s new ethics code is a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The code, in other words, codifies the same rules that Justice Clarence Thomas followed when he spent nine days vacationing on Republican billionaire Harlan Crow\u2019s superyacht<\/a> \u2014 a trip which \u201ccould have exceeded $500,000\u201d in value, according to ProPublica. The code also locks in place the same rules Thomas followed during his frequent summer trips to Crow\u2019s private resort in the Adirondacks<\/a>. The code \u201crepresents a codification of principles\u201d that Thomas followed when he bought a $267,230 RV that was underwritten by Anthony Welters<\/a>, another of the many wealthy individuals who have lavished gifts on Thomas since he joined the Court.”
…
“The new code also seeks to \u201cdispel\u201d any impression that the justices \u201cregard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,\u201d which may have been created when Justice Samuel Alito accepted a $100,000 private jet flight to Alaska from Republican billionaire Paul Singer<\/a>, where Alito stayed in a fishing lodge that ordinarily charges more than $1,000 a day to guests, and where Alito was reportedly served wine that costs more than $1,000 a bottle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new code, which, again, by its own explicit terms largely seeks to put in writing the same rules that these justices followed when they accepted luxurious gifts from major Republican Party donors, is also almost entirely unenforceable. If a litigant, or one of the more than 300 million Americans governed by the Supreme Court, believes that one of the justices is violating the newly written-down rules, there is no mechanism to enforce those rules against a justice.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The new code imposes no meaningful obligations on the justices. It explicitly disclaims any desire to do so. It accuses the Court\u2019s critics of \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d the justices\u2019 past behavior, when it really isn\u2019t hard to understand the ethical implications of taking a $500,000 gift from a major political donor.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/scotus\/2023\/11\/14\/23960027\/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The code, in other words, codifies the same rules that Justice Clarence Thomas followed when he spent nine days vacationing on Republican billionaire Harlan Crow\u2019s superyacht \u2014 a trip which \u201ccould have exceeded $500,000\u201d in value, according to ProPublica. The code also locks in place the same rules Thomas followed during his frequent summer trips to Crow\u2019s private resort in the Adirondacks. The code \u201crepresents a codification of principles\u201d that Thomas followed when he bought a $267,230 RV that was underwritten by Anthony Welters, another of the many wealthy individuals who have lavished gifts on Thomas since he joined the Court.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The new code also seeks to \u201cdispel\u201d any impression that the justices \u201cregard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,\u201d which may have been created when Justice Samuel Alito accepted a $100,000 private jet flight to Alaska from Republican billionaire Paul Singer, where Alito stayed in a fishing lodge that ordinarily charges more than $1,000 a day to guests, and where Alito was reportedly served wine that costs more than $1,000 a bottle.
\nThe new code, which, again, by its own explicit terms largely seeks to put in writing the same rules that these justices followed when they accepted luxurious gifts from major Republican Party donors, is also almost entirely unenforceable. If a litigant, or one of the more than 300 million Americans governed by the Supreme Court, believes that one of the justices is violating the newly written-down rules, there is no mechanism to enforce those rules against a justice.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The new code imposes no meaningful obligations on the justices. It explicitly disclaims any desire to do so. It accuses the Court\u2019s critics of \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d the justices\u2019 past behavior, when it really isn\u2019t hard to understand the ethical implications of taking a $500,000 gift from a major political donor.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/scotus\/2023\/11\/14\/23960027\/supreme-court-new-ethics-code-clarence-thomas-unenforceable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[790,607,1213,528],"class_list":["post-12358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-courts","tag-ethics","tag-judiciary","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12359,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12358\/revisions\/12359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}