The Supreme Court adopted a new code of ethics last year following many calls for it to do so in the wake of some controversial issues that arose involving some of the members of the high court.
But, one liberal member of the court thinks more needs to be done to ensure the justices adhere to that code.
On Thursday, liberal justice Elena Kagan said that if the Supreme Court wants to regain the respect of the nation, there needs to be some sort of oversight not provided by the high court’s justices themselves.
During a meeting with federal lawyers and judges this week, Kagan said she endorsed the calls for a system to be put into place to enforce the Supreme Court’s new ethics code.
As she said:
“The thing that can be criticized is: Rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this set of rules does not.”
Last November, the high court announced a new code of conduct that would be put in place for all justices. However, Kagan said that one of the biggest omissions of that code was any way to ensure it is enforced.
As she said:
“It’s a hard thing to do to figure out who exactly should be doing this and what kinds of sanctions would be appropriate for violations of the rules, but I feel as though we, however hard it is, that we could and should try to figure out some mechanism for doing this.”
So, who should be responsible for overseeing the code of conduct? The liberal judge, who was appointed to her position by former President Barack Obama, said she wasn’t so sure. She did say, though, that she didn’t believe it should be the justices looking out for each other.
Instead, she suggested “judges lower down the food chain” could oversee the Supreme Court’s code, though such a plan “creates perplexities” since it’s typically the job of the Supreme Court to hold lower federal courts in check — and not the other way around.
Kagan said that she believed Chief Justice John Roberts might create a committee consisting of judges from lower courts, which could then tackle any complaint that was levied against a Supreme Court justice.
She also said Congress creating such a committee might be a good idea. That’s an idea some congressional Democrats have pushed for in the last year.
While Kagan didn’t specifically reference any of the ethics controversies that some of her fellow justices have faced in recent times, she did say that it would be much preferable to create a mechanism of enforcement that was different from just having the justices themselves decide whether they were in violation of the new code.
As she explained:
“It would provide a sort of safe harbor. … Sometimes, people accuse us of misconduct where we haven’t engaged in misconduct. And, so, I think both in terms of enforcing the rules against people who have violated them, but also in protecting people who haven’t violated them, I think a system like that would make sense.”
