The Justices’ Lack of Ethics Is Fueling SCOTUS's Legitimacy Problems

The Supreme Court of theUnited States has two forces driving down its legitimacy to record lows: (i) far right opions soaked in religious belief that are very unpopular with a majority of Americans and (ii) the shocking lack of eithics on the part of a number of justices, not the least of which is Clarence Thomas followed by Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, the latter of whom has a mind set right out of the Spanish Inquisition.  By engaging in conduct that would likely cause lower level federal judges to be removed from the bench, these justices make a mockery of the law and put their biases and prejudices on display while demonstrating a level of arrogance that is shocking.  Indeed, with their lifetime appointments, they obviously feel they can do whatever they want and ethics and some shred of shame are out the window. The fact that the falsely labeled "conservative" justices - they are radical, not conservative - are increasingly blatant in the partisan activities just adds icing to the tone defeaf and unethical cake.  They seem incapable of any hint of self-awareness as to how they behavior looks to the pblic.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the right wing justices undermining the Court's legitimacy.  Here are excerpts:

It wasn’t a “high-tech lynching” three decades ago, when the Senate Judiciary Committee considered Anita Hill’s allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. And it is not a high-tech lynching for the committee to debate the ethics of now-Justice Thomas’s behavior and consider what steps are needed to address the broader issue.

But that was where the committee found itself on Tuesday. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the Thomas conversation a “shameful reprise of 1991’s high-tech lynching” and decried what he called a “political campaign designed to smear” the justice.

Former federal judge Michael Luttig submitted written testimony for Tuesday’s hearing, and the conservative jurist got to the heart of the matter. Justices, he wrote, must “conduct themselves in their nonjudicial conduct and activities in such a manner that they are individually deserving of respect — indeed, beyond reproach, not only in fact, but also in appearance. This, at all times and places, in both public and in private.”

Can that seriously be said of Thomas and his acceptance of lavish travel, gifts and other benefits from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, year after year after year? The yacht. The private jet. The purchase of his mother’s home. All unreported.

But while justices must follow rules, they also need to exercise judgment — to behave in a way that is, as Luttig said, “beyond reproach.” And here is where the jaw-dropping extent of the largesse — from a single source, from an ideological and political actor, from a man Thomas did not know before he became a justice — becomes so questionable.

Consider how Crow and his wife became, as Thomas said in a statement, “among our dearest friends.” They met on Crow’s private jet: As he told the Dallas Morning News, Crow was meeting with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis. When officials mentioned that Thomas was speaking to the group in Dallas, Crow offered the justice a lift, since he and the jet were headed home. Other rides would follow. This is no ordinary friendship.

But the Republican whataboutism doesn’t prove what Republicans think it does. They see the lack of attention to the ethical lapses of justices appointed by Democrats as evidence of an effort to “delegitimatize the Supreme Court” now that it is firmly in conservative hands. I see it as proof that the problem is systemic, and that something needs to be done — especially because the justices seem incapable of acting on their own.

Which is why it was such a shame that Tuesday’s hearing was more theatrics than theory. There are important questions about whether current financial disclosure rules need to be tightened or better enforced. There are complicated questions of constitutional law and institutional logistics about how a code of conduct would be enforced if the court were to adopt one — either voluntarily or by congressional fiat.

That is not the conversation this Senate is capable of having. Instead, Republicans insist on exhuming ancient grievances about nominations past (Robert H. Bork, Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown). They peddle false equivalencies . . .

Former George W. Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey, testifying for Republicans, warned that “the public is being asked to hallucinate misconduct so as to undermine the authority of Justices who issue rulings with which these critics disagree, and thus to undermine the authority of the rulings themselves.”

No hallucinogens required. This court is doing a bang-up job of undermining its authority, all on its own.