Facing criticism amid last year’s scandals, the Supreme Court adopted a code of conduct in November. From the beginning, a glaring problem with this code was its lack of an enforcement mechanism.
Justice Elena Kagan acknowledged that deficiency Thursday at a legal conference in California. O Barack Obama named noted that rules generally have enforcement mechanisms – and this one does not. She said it’s difficult to figure out who should apply and how, but there are he must be a mechanism. She proposed that judges should not do this to each other, but that judges of lower federal courts would probably be the best choice.
How such an agreement would work and what penalties would be available are still open questions. And Kagan is just one voice among nine justices, at least some of whom I probably disagreeincluding, perhaps, the judges at the center of recent controversies: Republican appointees Clarence Thomas It is Samuel Alito.
But just as important for President Joe Biden press court reforms Even if they don’t arrive soon, it’s important for Kagan to inform the public of her preference for accountability, even if her ideas are not accepted by all the other justices. One of the reforms Biden reportedly supports is an enforceable code — something that would likely not pass in a Republican-controlled House and the Republican-majority court may be considered unconstitutional anyway.
The court’s composition raises a larger issue in need of reform — whether by term limits, expanding the number of justices, or both — something that was also evident in Kagan’s testimony. public appearance Thursday. She highlighted the importance of respecting precedentfollowing another mandate in which the majority overthrew a great one, this time Chevron Deference. That decision led to Kagan’s dissent, in which she wrote that “a long-standing precedent at the heart of administrative governance is therefore the victim of a crude assertion of judicial authority. Most despise moderation and seek power.”
Even for something simple, like ethics rules with consequences for violations, it is clear that the court will cling to power as long as possible, both in its decisions and in its operations.
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This article was originally published in MSNBC.com
