WASHINGTON (CN) — While members of Congress make the most of their waning summer break — some of them posing with shirtless firefighters or showing off their antique vacuum cleaners — a contentious work period awaits when they return to Washington in September.
The fall session of Congress is bound to be characterized by a fierce battle over the federal budget, but a slew of hot-button issues face the federal judiciary as well, not the least of which is Senate Democrats’ push for Supreme Court ethics reform.
Lawmakers have for months sounded the alarm over what they say are comparatively lax ethical norms at the country’s highest court, amid a string of reports revealing several Supreme Court justices accepted high-dollar gifts, luxury travel and hospitality from wealthy benefactors.
The high court currently has no formal code of ethics.
Leading the charge for reform has been Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the upper chamber’s judiciary committee, and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
Democrats leveraged their slim Senate majority to make some headway on the issue before August recess, passing legislation sponsored by Whitehouse that would both force the Supreme Court to adopt a formal code of ethics and would stand up a review board to analyze ethical complaints against the high court’s justices.
That effort, however, proved highly partisan. Senate Republicans have chalked Democrats’ legislation up to an attempt to punish the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
“The bottom line is that this is a bill not designed to make the court stronger and more ethical,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham during a July 20 vote in the judiciary committee. “It is a bill to destroy a conservative court, to create a situation where conservative judges can be disqualified by stature and to rearrange the makeup of how the court governs itself.”
Whitehouse’s bill squeaked through the judiciary panel on an 11-10 vote, strictly along party lines.
Democrats have continued to push for Supreme Court ethics reform over the Senate’s August recess, ahead of a full chamber vote on their legislation. Following renewed scrutiny of Justice Clarence Thomas, who reportedly neglected to disclose dozens of gifts from wealthy donors, Durbin blasted the jurist for what he said was a “shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”
“These are not merely ethical lapses,” Durbin said in an Aug. 10 statement, alluding to separate reports that Justice Samuel Alito had not reported similar hospitality. “Justices Thomas and Alito have made it clear that they are oblivious to the embarrassment they have visited on the highest court in the land.”
Durbin, who says he has long been an advocate for Supreme Court ethics reform, has urged Chief Justice John Roberts to take matters in his own hands — but failing that, the lawmaker has said that Congress would step in.
Despite mounting pressure from congressional Democrats, the path forward for high court ethics legislation is not yet clear.
“I can’t be very optimistic that there will be 60 votes to move it out of the Senate,” said Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law. “Even if it somehow does go to a vote and it passes the Senate, I think it’s dead on arrival in the House.”
Republican opposition to Supreme Court ethics reform was united in the judiciary committee, Tobias said. He predicted that there were unlikely to be any GOP defectors in a full Senate vote, where Democrats hold a one-seat majority. Republicans meanwhile enjoy a slim advantage in the House, and any ethics reform bill in the lower chamber would face even stronger backlash.
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