What seems lost in this discussion is the principle that by accepting a judgeship, one is accepting a lifetime of governmental salary and is foregoing the many multiples of that salary that almost any half-decent lawyer could expect to earn in his career.
It is as if we expect justices to accept gifts and contributions and benefits to compensate them for their lowly governmental salaries, to which i say NO NO NO–the prestige of serving on the Supreme Court is the compensation, and you have accepted that tradeoff in accepting the position. You don’t get to decide to accept additional compensation as well.
How can we possibly know? What kind of question is this??
Maybe he got decision previews, maybe Thomas worked a little extra harder to convince other Justices to rule in a way that would benefit Crow, maybe Crow got to bend his ear on issues that he considered important and would love to see go a certain way. Who knows?
Had those gifts been reported, this wouldn’t be an issue. Well, maybe some of those gifts would still be an issue, even if reported.
It isn’t the criticism that is undermining the legitimacy of the court. It’s the actions of member(s) of the court. Calling out corruption isn’t the issue, it’s the corruption. The fact that the GOP refuses to acknowledge how bad this all looks is another issue. They are making this seem partisan by rushing to defend this, even as more damning stories were coming out daily. Oppositional defiance disorder is going to be what destroys our pillars of democracy. Not those that are trying to clean it up and protect it.
Just look at the public approval of the current Supreme Court. The number has been tanking to a dreadful place long before any of these Thomas stories came out.
Exactly. The fact that Thomas chose to not declare the gifts – or, if I were to choose to be very generous, that he chose to interpret the rules about reporting gifts in a way that didn’t require reporting – strongly suggests, to me, that Thomas realized that the gifts were excessively large, and would be seen as questionable if they were made public knowledge.
The public talking about this issue is not what is undermining the legitimacy of the Court. It is that one of the Court justices gave us something to talk about.
This whole idea – that the rhetoric about Thomas is more damaging than Thomas’ actual behavior – sounds an awful lot like Republicans calling Democrats “divisive” for calling out Republican’ disgusting actions.
Injecting doubt into completely valid and legitimate voting results caused a mob of people to storm the Capitol while they were certifying the election. That’s only a little worse than pointing out that a judge was accepting hugely valuable secret gifts for decades?
Your position makes it incredibly easy for SCOTUS justices to get rich and act corruptly – all they need to do is make sure not to leave a paper trail of “vote XYZ in exchange for gift ABC”.
For all we know, Crow has directed every vote, though without leaving a paper trail or any other evidence not in Thomas and Crow’s brains. Your position means these gifts can continue indefinitely, unreported, with no consequences at all.
It’s also really rich that we constantly hear about “Soros funded prosecutors”, and how terrible it is for George Soros to be involved in politics and to use his money to further his goals of promoting western Democracy over Eastern European Authoritarianism. That is a constant refrain on the right. Soros, Soros, Soros. And yet, here we have a very active right wing benefactor funding the lifestyle of an actual Supreme Court Justice and his wife, and mother for decades without reporting it, and the very idea that we would question this arrangement is just beyond the pale, and a threat to our pillars of democracy.
is the word “half-decent.” By it, I mean any lawyer earning what a SC nominee is earning at the time of his nomination to the SC. Most of them are judges earning governmental salaries a little lower than a SC Justice earns, some are earning other government salaries (like Thomas) but if any of them rejected the nomination and opted to go into private practice, they would earn much more money than any public servant earns.
That is a choice, prestige over money. They can’t then justify corruption because they’re making such paltry salaries.
Well, they can, but it’s blatant hypocrisy. They made the choice.
I think I posted this on another thread, but this … THIS is what SCOTUS casually opted out of:
Code of Conduct for United States Judges
Canon 1: A Judge Should Uphold the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities Canon 3: A Judge Should Perform the Duties of the Office Fairly, Impartially and Diligently Canon 4: A Judge May Engage in Extrajudicial Activities that are Consistent with the Obligations of Judicial Office Canon 5: A Judge Should Refrain from Political Activity
It’s astounding to me that “Nah. I’m good. Thanks, though” was somehow considered an acceptable answer. But it’s good to – even if only in effect – be accountable to no one.