WASHINGTON (CN) — As lawmakers abandon the halls of Congress for the final time in 2023, they leave behind some major unfinished business — and, for the Senate’s top legal affairs panel, uncertainty about the future of bipartisanship.
Despite long-standing calls for cross-aisle cooperation from Democratic leadership, partisan tensions flared on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the waning months of the year, catalyzed primarily by lawmakers’ probe into ethical malfeasance on the Supreme Court.
Spearheaded by panel chair Senator Dick Durbin and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Supreme Court ethics investigation has become one of the Judiciary Committee’s defining efforts this year. The issue reentered the spotlight in the spring, following reports from investigative journalism organization ProPublica that Justice Clarence Thomas had gone on luxury vacations with billionaire real estate developer and conservative megadonor Harlan Crow.
In the following months, further revelations tied both Thomas and fellow Justice Samuel Alito to a web of conservative benefactors and legal activists from whom they appear to have accepted lavish gifts.
Until recently, the Supreme Court had financial reporting requirements, but no formal code of ethical standards. Despite that, much of the hospitality accepted by Thomas and Alito went unreported on the justices’ annual financial disclosure forms.
In the Judiciary Committee, Durbin and Senate Democrats vowed to hold the Supreme Court accountable if it refused to self-regulate.
“Ethics cannot simply be left to the discretion of the nation’s highest court,” Durbin, who has advocated for Supreme Court ethics reform since at least 2012, told his colleagues during a May hearing.
As part of their inquiry, Democrats have advanced a bill aimed at forcing the high court to adopt a code of ethics. Lawmakers have also demanded that the justices’ benefactors — including Crow and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo — turn over detailed records of their relationships with high court jurists.
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, have raged against their colleagues’ push to legislate Supreme Court ethics reform — framing the effort as unconstitutional and decrying it as a political stunt aimed at exacting revenge on the conservative-dominated high court.
The Supreme Court, for its part, has responded to Democrats’ inquiry on two occasions. The high court first weighed in in April, when Chief Justice John Roberts sent the Judiciary Committee a statement of judicial ethics cosigned by all nine sitting justices.
The court took even more drastic action last month, issuing its first-ever formal ethics code. Critics, however, have said that the document doesn’t actually set any new standards and lacks the teeth to enforce ethics lapses.
Durbin has lauded the new code as a “step in the right direction,” but said that it doesn’t go far enough.
Threats of Republican retaliation
Until last month, the GOP’s opposition to the ethics probe was largely rhetorical. Things took a drastic turn, though, at a November meeting in the Judiciary Committee, during which Democrats authorized subpoenas for Crow and Leo. Walking out of the vote in protest, Republican lawmakers promised that the ethics probe would have far-reaching implications.
“This is a joke,” seethed Senator Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee’s GOP ranking member. “This is going to fundamentally change the way the committee operates.”
Texas Senator John Cornyn declared that Democrats had “destroyed one of the most important committees in the United States Senate.”
Graham later suggested to reporters that committee Republicans would stop cooperating with Democrats on some of the panel’s most vital business, such as approving White House nominees for federal court vacancies.
Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton put it bluntly, telling Courthouse News that committee Democrats “won't be able to get a resolution praising mom, apple pie and baseball across the Senate floor.”
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