The Supreme Court’s code of conduct is a ploy to smear the Right


The Supreme Court adopted a new code of conduct on Nov. 13, outlining self-enforced rules the justices must follow. Senate Judiciary Democrats pushed for this new code amid ethics scrutiny on Justice Clarence Thomas, who is accused of accepting luxury vacations from a Republican donor.

Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten contends that this new code of conduct is just another effort by Democrats to make Republicans appear unethical and reduce the Right’s political power.

The purposes of these efforts are to make Conservatives recuse themselves from pivotal cases, intimidate wobbly justices into going along with progressives on those cases, attack the integrity of the Court so it subordinates itself to and submits to Democrat legislators and activists, or if all else fails, spark a nullification crisis. 

On its face, the Supreme Court’s Code of Conduct is unobjectionable. Its terms are reasonable. In it, the justices emphasize Canon 3B, which deals with recusal, likely to neutralize Democrats’ increasingly loud calls for conservative justices to beg off of certain cases.

There are three problems with releasing the document, though: First, merely by issuing it, the Court may be seen to be legitimizing the illegitimate attacks of the Court’s critics. Second, it shows those critics that the Court will blink in the face of political pressure, incentivizing further attacks. Third, now the written terms will surely be hung around Conservatives’ necks — only Conservatives’ necks, of course — only intensifying the delegitimization effort.