Between Yachts and Flags, It’s Time for Supreme Court Accountability

This excerpt is from a piece by Rakim Brooks and Keith Thirion that originally ran in Democracy Docket on June 6, 2024.

Justices’ words can carry the weight of the law of the land and are therefore not mere acts of “free speech” or “opposing views.” They speak to the jurist’s ability — and willingness — to be impartial in the cases that come before them. Alito is literally flying his biases in front of his own home while arguing that only the beliefs he and his wife hold are under threat. Like his colleagues who’ve been scrutinized for their political biases, he is painting himself as the victim while openly daring us to hold him accountable for his own actions.

It’s time that we rise to the occasion. The Supreme Court has been weaponized as a political tool as much as the other two branches, and we are overdue to treat it as such.

After all, these recent Alito revelations follow a year-long cavalcade of reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’s unethical behavior — to say nothing of his own spouse Ginni’s participation in trying to overturn the 2020 election. While public trust in the Court has spiraled downward, Chief Justice John Roberts’s silence has been deafening. This Court’s conservatives feel absolutely no threat to their power, and if we don’t act, we are only encouraging them to continue their bad behavior.

Congress has the power and obligation to respond. At the minimum, that should include hearings and investigations into the justices’ unethical and compromising behavior. But whether these lead to new findings or not, there needs to be actual accountability. That includes legislation to create an enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme Court; the toothless document the Court produced last fall is clearly insufficient.

But the Court’s growing legitimacy issue speaks to a more endemic problem of its structure. So long as justices are welcome to serve for the rest of their lives and are totally free to govern themselves, we can only expect this reckless and unethical behavior to continue. This is why it’s essential to advance reforms to the Court such as term limits that will curtail the unbridled power that justices continue to abuse.

Enough is enough. These justices have repeatedly shown us who they are — Alito and Thomas have demonstrably aligned themselves with movements dedicated to gutting the progress we’ve made on civil rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality and so much more. It’s time we believe them — and finally do something about it.

Read the complete piece.