Supreme Court justices are supposed to keep themselves removed from political bias or influence. But who makes sure they're actually doing that?
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Recently, news about Justice Clarence Thomas's decades-long friendship with a wealthy Republican megadonor, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts and generosity he's received from that friendship, has led to increased scrutiny into whether Supreme Court justices are as unbiased and uninfluenced as they claim. It's also revealed how, unlike most other federal officials, we rely on the good faith of the justices to hold themselves accountable.
Helping us untangle this is Tonja Jacobi, professor of law and the Sam Nunn chair in Ethics and Professionalism at Emory University School of Law.
Don't miss the reporting from ProPublica on Justice Thomas's relationship with Harlan Crow, called "Friends of the Court."
Listen here:
Transcript:
Nick Capodice: [00:00:02] So Hannah, you know, that New Hampshire Public Radio, the organization we work for, has a handbook, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:08] Yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:09] And that handbook has a bunch of stuff in it. It's about working hours, benefits, hiring practices, but it also has rules. Rules about how you should behave in the workplace, how you should conduct yourself in public, a code of conduct, if you will.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:25] Right. And of course, there's usually something about what happens if you don't follow those rules. But Nick, why are we talking about this?
Nick Capodice: [00:00:33] Well, even though it might not be a handbook for most workplaces, including the federal government, have codes of conduct that set expectations and hold people accountable. And when it comes to our federal government in particular, many of these codes of conduct are publicly available.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:51] Which I suppose makes sense because our government is ultimately accountable to the people.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:56] It is indeed. But there is one corner of our federal government, a rather important corner, if you will, that seems to operate a little differently.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:01:05] The Supreme Court is considered probably the most powerful court in the world, so it's very important to make sure that they are not biased in favor or against particular parties. But the justices have largely been unregulated to a large extent, and they're just mostly it's relied on norms over time.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:32] This is Tonja Jacobi. She's a professor of law and the Sam Nunn chair in legal ethics and Professionalism at Emory University School of Law. And we're talking to her today because lately there's been some question as to just how accountable our Supreme Court justices are to anyone but themselves.
Archival Audio: [00:01:50] Private jets, lavish trips and access to exclusive clubs all provided to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for more than two decades by a Dallas businessman and Republican Megadonor. There are no Ethics guidelines, guardrails at the highest court in the land. This seems ridiculous In Court, it's apparently fine to have.All of your vacations be paid for by some billionaire Republican donor. It's apparently fine.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:20] This is Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:22] I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:23] And today we are talking about why our Supreme Court is getting so much scrutiny for how it oversees itself and what kind of accountability we actually have for the highest court in the land. So right now. Hannah May 2023. There has been a lot of news about the private lives of our Supreme Court justices, notably Justice Clarence Thomas, and the expensive gifts he has gotten throughout a long friendship with a very, very wealthy man, Harlan Crow. And this friend is not just wealthy. He's deeply invested in conservative politics. But before we get into why this relationship is getting so much attention, we got to take a step back and talk about why we care so much about the finances of government officials in the first place.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:03:16] We generally in politics are worried about in terms of corruption, people giving gifts or actual bribes to politicians and other people with power. And so we have a lot of restrictions generally on what what sort of gifts politicians can accept and when they have to declare those gifts. So, for example, it's in the Constitution that the president isn't supposed to receive gifts from international parties, for example.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:43] I mean, makes sense. If someone buys you a new car, for example, you might feel like you owe them something in return.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:50] Yeah. And it could be more nefarious than that. A gift could actually be a trade of some kind or a bribe. I buy you a new car, but you give my child rides to school for the next ten years, for example, or I raise a bunch of money under the table and use it to pay someone to break into your opponent's campaign headquarters.
Archival Audio: [00:04:08] The Democratic National Committee is trying to solve a spy mystery. It began before dawn Saturday, when five intruders were captured by police inside the offices of the committee in Washington. The five men carried cameras and apparently had planted electronic bugs. One of them had several crisp new $100 bills in his pocket.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:26] Now, listeners probably know this, but that second example was part of the Watergate scandal, where President Nixon and his allies spied on political opponents and then attempted to cover it up. That scandal made preventing political corruption and bribery top of mind. And one solution Congress came up with as a result was the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:47] What did that do.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:48] Well, among other things, it required federal officials across the three branches of government, including justices, to file reports every year about their finances, including the money they made and spent in outside business deals, real estate transactions, fund raising and gifts.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:07] So financial disclosures.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:10] Exactly.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:11] And the idea is that by making people explain where they are getting money from and how it is being used, the government can better prevent corruption.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:22] Right? The Ethics in Government Act also gave Congress and individual government agencies the power to investigate and to pursue suspicious behavior.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:32] But today, we're talking about the behavior of Supreme Court justices, not the president or Congress. So how does this oversight work in the judicial branch?
Nick Capodice: [00:05:44] Well, when it comes to the federal judiciary, which includes district and circuit courts as well as the Supreme Court appearance, is extremely important.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:05:52] Generally, when it comes to regulating judges, we say not only is it important that there is no actual influence, that there is no wrongdoing, for example, taking bribes or being influenced, but also that there's no appearance of that possibility because judges have power, because we believe in their ability to be neutral and to rule not according to politics or what they voted to do, but rather because of how they interpret the law. And so the appearance of any kind of unethical influence, anything like that, has to be avoided as well as the actual misconduct.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:28] Tonja is saying that unlike elected officials like the president, who we elect specifically, because of their political stances, judges are supposed to be apolitical in order to do their jobs. Well, putting aside the question of whether judges and justices are actually politically neutral, because that is a question worth asking, and many would say they are not. It's not enough to just say they're politically neutral. They need to show it, right?
Nick Capodice: [00:06:56] Yeah. Like, for example, if you're a judge who oversees election cases, you shouldn't receive expensive gifts from an attorney who represents clients in cases about election laws. Right. Especially if they're going to be appearing before you in court.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:11] Because even if those expensive gifts were not actually bribes, people might see them as bribes, which calls your integrity into question.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:20] Yeah, and that's reflected in the ethics rules for the federal judiciary, which incorporate federal law from the Ethics and Government Act, but are tailored specifically tailored to the judiciary. These rules say that judicial officials have to disclose certain financial behavior, but also they have to avoid situations that could be seen as currying favor. To a specific party or a person.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:43] Who makes these ethics rules for the federal judiciary.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:47] That falls on the judicial conference, which is like the administrative arm of the judicial branch. The judicial conference is made up of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who is the presiding officer, as well as chief judges in every judicial circuit and the Court of International Trade and one judge from each district court. And this conference convenes twice a year.
Archival Audio: [00:08:09] The judicial conference of the United States met in Washington, D.C. for their biannual meeting. C-span talked with Bob Fiedler, legislative and public affairs.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:21] Now, what are the rules look like?
Nick Capodice: [00:08:23] This conference has a code of conduct that all federal judges and employees have to follow. It includes the process for financial disclosure rules about recusals and best practices in the courtroom and outside of it. The code of conduct helps maintain impartiality and importantly, the appearance of impartiality and disclosing gifts is one part of that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:47] Can I ask what counts as a gift?
Nick Capodice: [00:08:49] In general, anything of monetary value? Over $415 counts as a disclosable gift unless it comes from a relative. You also have to disclose gifts that are given to your spouse or your children.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:03] What about something a little more ambiguous, like someone offers to let you stay at their beach house for a week free of charge? That's a gift. But, you know, it's hard to quantify that on a disclosure form.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:18] Yeah, the disclosure rules make an exception for, quote, personal hospitality. Now, in the original Ethics and Government Act, the rule was you had to report, quote, the identity of the source and a brief description of any gifts or transportation, lodging, food or entertainment, end quote, over a couple hundred dollars. But it also said that, quote, Any food, lodging or entertainment received as personal hospitality of any individual need not be reported.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:45] Is transportation missing from that second sentence on purpose?
Nick Capodice: [00:09:49] Good catch, Hannah.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:09:50] Well, there was recently a change in the rules to make quite explicit, for example, that private jet flights are meant to be reported.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:58] The newly updated regulations, which came out in March of 2023, clarified that staying at a resort or using a private jet does not count as personal hospitality and therefore must be disclosed.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:12] Right. I mean, if one of your friends is letting you fly on their private jet for free, that is a pretty expensive thing that is relatively easy to calculate the cost of. Now, I'm curious about this code of conduct that you mentioned. Is that also where enforcement of these rules comes in?
Nick Capodice: [00:10:29] It is.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:10:29] Lower court judges are much more restricted in terms of what sort of sources of extra income they can receive, for example, or what gifts they can receive and when they have to recuse themselves. So when they have to step down from hearing a particular case because they have some sort of relationship with the parties and that can be like an actual relationship, like, you know, being a cousin or what have you. But it can also be, well, I have shares in this person's company or I've sat on the board of this person's company or any interests like that that can be pecuniary.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:01] Pecuniary meaning it has some financial value. What happens if someone violates these rules? Does the judicial conference investigate?
Nick Capodice: [00:11:11] It does investigate, and it also provides guidance for investigations across the federal judiciary. An investigation could lead to disciplinary action, and this could be anything from a slap on the wrist to voluntary resignation to impeachment by Congress.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:27] So we've been talking about judges a lot here, but I noticed that we have not mentioned justices and You. And I know that when it comes to the Supreme Court, they are known as justices. So do they have to abide by the same code of conduct? And who investigates the justices if they don't follow the rules?
Tonja Jacobi: [00:11:47] The Supreme Court justices are treated differently. They are at the top of the hierarchy and they are treated differently in that they're allowed to define their own role. And we rely on their sense of what is right and wrong generally to do the right thing.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:06] And we'll get to that right after the break. I just want to echo Tonja's statement. You listener can also do the right thing. Support the podcast. That helps you understand why it is a Supreme Court justice isn't held to the same standards as any other judge. If you like our show, if you like our mission of explaining how our democracy works, give a gift in any amount at our website, civics101podcast.org. We're back. You're listening to Civics 101. We are talking about the rules and expectations of federal judges and how for Supreme Court justices, those rules are actually more like guidelines.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:12:56] The reason there's been so much controversy is that perhaps there's been the suggestion that the justices haven't really been playing by the rules.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:03] This, again, is Tonja Jacobi.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:13:05] Now, the rules for justices are really just to say what they are receiving.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:10] What does Tonja mean by that?
Nick Capodice: [00:13:12] Essentially, the Supreme Court justices are generally just expected to report their financial transactions.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:13:18] So it's not that they can't receive gifts, but they have to just tell the public what gifts they are receiving so that it's all out in the open and nothing's going on behind closed doors.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:28] But I feel like the Supreme Court, since it is a part of the federal judiciary, arguably the most powerful part, would want to hold itself to the highest possible standard of integrity. I would assume that its ethical rules would have to be the strictest.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:44] Yeah, you would expect that, right? Which is why the news about Justice Thomas, which we're going to get into now, has been such a big story.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:13:53] Justice Thomas got a lot of attention recently because it turned out that for many, many years he was receiving very, very expensive gifts such as rides on a private jet.
Archival Audio: [00:14:04] The report says that the Thomas flew on Crowe's private jet to Indonesia for the nine day luxury vacation, one that they say is valued at more than $500,000.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:14:15] Now, vacations on someone's super yacht property being bought from him where his mother lives for free. Now.
Archival Audio: [00:14:25] Harlan Crowe is owns the house where Justice Thomas's mother is living, apparently rent free.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:14:31] By a person who had interests before the court. And so that raises real concerns about the appearance of wrongdoing or at least appearance of undue influence.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:44] Earlier this year, ProPublica reported on the decades long friendship between Justice Thomas and a guy named Harlan Crow.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:52] Who is Harlan Crow?
Nick Capodice: [00:14:53] Crow is a billionaire real estate developer from Dallas, and he is a Republican megadonor. He is also affiliated with the Federalist Society, which is a conservative legal organization that will have its own episode one day. But in short, it has major influence on nominations to the Supreme Court and to lower courts.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:13] Which is a good reminder that Supreme Court justices and most judges in the US, I mean, they're nominated by politicians.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:21] And not only that, Crow himself donated $500,000 to publicity campaigns for conservative nominees to the Supreme Court when George W Bush was president.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:32] Okay, So Harlan Crow isn't just a Republican donor. It sounds like he's really invested in the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:40] Yeah. And he's also really invested in the Thomas family. For example, Crow donated $500,000 to a conservative political group founded by Justice Thomas's wife, Ginni, and he donated $175,000 to Justice Thomas's childhood library to build a new wing dedicated to the justice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:00] All right. So even if we set aside the question of whether or not this is, you know, a good look for a justice to willingly receive such generosity from someone who's clearly invested in his job, these gifts that Justice Thomas has received from Crow seem like things that he might want to disclose. Right? Right. So did he know? May I ask what Justice Thomas's rationale was for not disclosing all of this?
Nick Capodice: [00:16:38] Well, when it comes to the gifts, basically, Justice Thomas said he interpreted the gifts as personal hospitality. But Tonja says even before the rules became more specific, it's hard to imagine that Thomas didn't know he was supposed to report something like a flight on a private jet.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:16:55] It was pretty hard to believe that Clarence Thomas didn't know that he was meant to report that previously because other restrictions on the rules say various other types of gifts when the value is more than $200. Now, a private jet costs tens of thousands of dollars to run. So the idea that you need to specify that a private jet ride would need to be disclosed is a little bit farcical in terms of just basic legal interpretation of a document and what things are similar. So Justice Clarence Thomas prides himself on being a textualist. And so if he was interpreting a statute that said these other things have to be disclosed when they're over $200, and you asked him, well, what about it? Right. In a private jet. He couldn't with a straight face say, no, that wouldn't be included.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:41] So she's saying that Justice Thomas was interpreting the law as it applied to him in a way that was not consistent with how he normally interprets the written law in his own role as a Supreme Court justice. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:17:55] Yeah. And really quickly, just to clarify, the whole private property thing, that's different than a gift, but still a major ethical question. Crow bought a home and two vacant lots from Justice Thomas and his relatives, and then Crow spent over $30,000 on renovations of the home. While Justice Thomas's mother still lived in it, and Crow said he bought that home for historical preservation.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:20] And just as Thomas did not disclose that sale.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:23] He did not. Even though the law says that officials need to disclose information about any real estate transaction over $1,000.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:30] So what are the consequences for not disclosing this?
Nick Capodice: [00:18:33] A justice does need to report these disclosures to comply with the Ethics and Government Act. And the Supreme Court has said it follows the disclosure process by the judicial conference as a matter of practice. But like we said earlier, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is the presiding officer of the judicial conference.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:52] So if there is something weird going on with the Supreme Court justices, financial disclosure, the judicial conference could look into it. But the judicial conference itself is run by the head of the Supreme Court, which doesn't sound like a great setup for accountability.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:09] Yeah, exactly. It means that internal enforcement of the Supreme Court is relying almost entirely on the good faith of the justices themselves. So real outside accountability would probably need to come from Congress. Congress could investigate a justice's disclosures which might lead to an impeachment trial, but only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached. Samuel Chase, by the way, 1805. And he was acquitted.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:36] And in Justice Thomas's case, this financial relationship with Harlan Crow has been going on for several decades, and it's only thanks to an outside investigation from ProPublica journalists that we even know so much about it now. Yeah, but what about that judicial code of conduct? Does the Supreme Court not need to abide by that either?
Nick Capodice: [00:19:57] No. The Supreme Court has said that it uses the code of conduct as guidance, but it has its own internal ethics procedures. But these procedures are not exactly transparent. Hannah, And I should add, this is not necessarily a new issue.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:20:11] You know, there have been lots of controversies that have gone a little bit of attention, but not much. For example, you know, Justice Scalia went on on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney when Dick Cheney was vice president and had a case coming before the Supreme Court. And that was all paid for and then refused to recuse himself and ruled in favor of Vice President Cheney. Now, Justice Gorsuch was recently revealed, also sold property to someone who appears before the court. And he put the fact of the sale of the property in the public disclosures, but he didn't say who bought it. And so there's a lot of controversy swirling around the court now that the judges aren't being honest and open. And the one mechanism that we require of them to actually just say what is going on in their finances, not even just not accept gifts, but to just tell the public when they accept gifts, they're not even following those rules. So there have been lots of controversies like that over time that have got less attention. But I think this one, it's it's so audacious, the idea of this just as living large off money provided by rich friends who then bring business to the court, I think it actually had to get to such an extreme before people really started paying attention to it. And it just shows how willing we are to think the best of the justices. And they have to behave pretty badly to get this kind of attention that. Justice Thomas is getting.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:33] This is interesting. It's like the Supreme Court itself is kind of a black box. Nobody is monitoring their disclosures too closely.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:41] Yeah, and this is important because the Supreme Court is also pretty vague about when they decide to recuse themselves from cases.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:21:47] In the case of the Supreme Court justices, they get to define for themselves whether they think they will be subject to undue influence if they hear the case. And the problem with that is that most people think that they can be much more objective than than science shows that they actually can be just as might think to themselves. Well, sure. You know, I have a relationship with this person. They've taken me on vacations, but I won't let that influence me. But of course it does. You just feel you feel differently towards a person who's showered you with gifts, who's taken you on their super yacht for a vacation. And even if you personally think you won't be influenced, you're probably not a very good judge of that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:28] If we're trusting them to report their disclosures. And at least in the case of Justice Thomas, there is a question as to whether he's been entirely honest about them, and we're also trusting them to recuse themselves. It seems like there's not a great way to hold the justices accountable for avoiding influence, which to me kind of speaks to how throughout history we've given the Supreme Court basically the benefit of the doubt that they are floating above what I would call basic human behavior.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:03] Yeah. And in fact, Justice Thomas has been criticized for not recusing himself several times. A recent example you've probably heard about relates to his wife, Ginni Thomas, connection to a very high profile case.
Archival Audio: [00:23:15] Three days after Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas texted Trump, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to keep fighting. The results do not concede, Ginni Thomas wrote, It takes time for the Army who is gathering for his back.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:30] Ginni Thomas was accused of working directly with members of Trump's White House during the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, even as Justice Thomas himself was hearing cases in the Supreme Court about those same election results.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:23:43] As I mentioned, it's not just about whether you will actually be influenced. It's about the appearance of influence. It's about the appearance of the conflict of interest, and so that the public can have faith that the Supreme Court is actually neutral without having to get inside the mind of each justice and actually say, oh, this person was actually influenced.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:02] What does all of this attention do for the legitimacy of the Supreme Court?
Nick Capodice: [00:24:08] It doesn't help Hannah.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:24:09] So the Supreme Court, for the first time in history, has extremely low polling numbers. Traditionally, the Supreme Court has always been the best considered institution of government, and now it has higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings for the first time in history. And I think that reflects the fact that some of the justices aren't making efforts to preserve the legitimacy. And the Supreme Court has power because traditionally, because of its legitimacy.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:39] Now, concern over Supreme Court legitimacy has reached Congress. Earlier this year, the Senate held a hearing about imposing a code of conduct for the Supreme Court, and representatives proposed a bill that would require the Supreme Court to create a public, transparent code of conduct.
Speaker10: [00:24:57] The court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules. So both justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:08] This proposal would also require the Supreme Court to create an investigative process for its own violations.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:14] Do we know how the Supreme Court feels about that?
Tonja Jacobi: [00:25:17] Recently, all nine justices signed on to a letter saying that they don't think that ethics rules should be imposed upon. And that's very rare where you have every single justice sign off on a statement by the court.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:30] And the statement itself has generated a lot of discussion. But the big takeaway is that the Supreme Court justices want to maintain their own internal ethics standards that are not the result of a direct action from Congress. Here is Chief Justice Roberts commenting on this at a law dinner a few weeks later.
Speaker11: [00:25:48] I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment. And I am confident there are ways to do that that are consistent with our status as an independent branch of government under the Constitution's separation of powers.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:16] What officially is a statement of the court? I'm not sure that I understand what it means for the justices to put something out like that.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:26:24] That's a good.
Speaker12: [00:26:24] Question.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:26:26] Everything is very opaque about much of the running of the court, but normally what will happen is that the court will just put out a statement. Sometimes it'll be specifically from the chief justice as the the administrative head of the court, but sometimes it'll just be put out by the court and that's probably, you know, officially done by an administrator and sort of nameless administrator of the court. And it just represents the views of the court. So statements by the court in in quotes, it does vary who that comes from.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:55] Okay. So what are some of the potential outcomes here? What can Congress do to improve public trust in the court, especially since it seems like the court is reluctant to adopt official ethics rules?
Tonja Jacobi: [00:27:08] Congress has a lot of powers to regulate the court. Congress can say, we're going to take this whole area of jurisprudence away from you as a jurisdictional matter so they can say you're not allowed to decide reproductive rights cases anymore, for example.
Nick Capodice: [00:27:22] This would mean that Congress writes laws that restrict the federal judiciary's authority over certain cases or that codify certain rights into law rather than as constitutional rights. But even if laws like these were passed, their constitutionality could still be challenged in court.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:27:42] Or Congress could write a detailed code of conduct that applies to the Supreme Court as a matter of law rather than just as a matter of norms. But Congress is unlikely to do that under its current constitution. In terms of the Democrat Republican divide in both the House and the Senate at the moment, until until the Senate abolishes the filibuster or until there's a super majority that is in favor of reform. And that would have to be Democrats, because the Republicans at the moment are very happy with the court because it's extremely conservative. So in reality, we're unlikely to see reform of the court coming out of Congress, even though Congress certainly has the power, but it doesn't have the inclination. But the Supreme Court also has the power to set rules for itself. But it also doesn't have the inclination, as evidenced by the fact that all nine justices signed on to this letter saying we don't want to be subject to ethics restrictions.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:42] And last thing, HannaH, I think it is really important we put all of this into context of the role of the Supreme Court. We have a Supreme Court as the final interpreter of the Constitution, and sometimes the rulings they're being asked to make apply directly to themselves.
Tonja Jacobi: [00:29:02] And the other thing the Supreme Court has done is actually really cut back on the ability of the government to regulate bribery of all kinds and other areas of white collar criminality and also disclosure requirements as well. Justice Thomas is the justice who has led the charge against disclosure requirements generally. So, for example, in political donations, he has been fighting fight for many years to say that people should be able to give money to politicians and the politicians shouldn't have to disclose it. In recent years, this has not always been the case. But the Roberts court treats white collar crime, bribery, disclosure, those sorts of issues of essentially wealthy people quite differently to the way it treats criminal issues facing the average person. And so I think that's sort of a the ultimate broader context to put this in light, because we know power corrupts. That's why we require things like disclosure of gifts. It's a fund like the founders recognized that power corrupts. And so therefore, we have, you know, various checks and balances in place to try and stop that. One of the few ways we check the Supreme Court is just to make them at least admit what gifts they're giving. And so, yeah, I mean, the fact that that is being flouted by justices and the there's no real accountability, there is a sign that the system is breaking down a little bit. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:53] That is it for this episode, which was written and produced by Christina Phillips with help from Hannah McCarthy and me. Nick Capodice. Jacqui Fulton Is our producer and Rebecca Lavoie, our executive producer. Music in this episode by Gustav, Sarah the instrumentalist, Margarita Matt Large, Arthur Benson, Cushy, Lucas Pittman and Walt Adams. And if you want more Civics 101 Well, we got it. You can check out our entire catalog at civics101podcast.org. And if you've got a question about America, just clang it around in your noodle. Let us know. Just send us an email at Civics 101 at nhpr.org and we might just make an episode. Civics 101 is and of Right ought to be a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.