Apparently, Mr. @Damuri_Ajashi has been banned but, to answer, a judge should be impartial towards the parties arguing the case and should avoid all conduct that could give any doubt about their impartiality.
If a person is liable to argue before the court then you should not accept anything from that could reasonably be construed as a gift. If you have accepted something from someone that could reasonably be interpreted as a gift and then that person shows up on your court, then you should recuse.
If you’ve been asked to speak at someone’s event in a parking lot, somewhere in Poughkeepsie, and they’re putting you up at a mid-tier hotel for one night then it’s unreasonable to interpret that as a gift. If, on the other hand, you’re being flown out to a resort in the Maldives for two weeks, so you can give a 15 minute speech, then that’s most reasonable to interpret as a gift - regardless that there is, technically, that speaking component.
And, likewise, if a justice ONLY ever accepts speaking requests from a certain party - e.g. the ACLU - I would personally put that down as bad policy. As said, they’re supposed to avoid seeming like they’re partial to any particular policy or platform. So, even ignoring gifts, if there seems to be a lot of fairly focused, consistent, cooperative/collusionary activity between a judge and any party liable to appear before the court then they should be recusing for any related case, until they’ve demonstrably changed their ways.
And, yes, ideally Congress would codify this in some way. But, they should also consider why we’ve gotten to this point and try to fix that as well.
If you’ve reached the top of your profession and hold one of the most prestigious jobs in the country, it might feel like you’re not being valued appropriately if you can’t afford the occasional luxury vacation. A base salary of $270k and government health insurance is probably not that. Yes, they can sell books but that’s basically a whole other job that they have to do just to keep up with the Joneses when - in theory - they should be in a position that they no longer need to keep up with the Joneses. The whole purpose of lifetime employment, etc. is that a judge should be beyond corruption. The idea is that they’ve got life set and don’t need to care anymore. Having to write books - which, mind, need to be opinionated and partisan enough to be novel and interesting so that they’ll have an audience - so you’re not living in an apartment in DC, is not living beyond corruption.
They should get a stiff bump in their salaries.
But they should also be policeable. Making a law that says, “You need to report your gifts.” But, that doesn’t carry any penalties, is not valuable. Perhaps it’s meant to be implied that the failure to report is a crime worthy of being removed from office, but that’s not stated. It should be clearly stated so that, if ever it happens, there’s no ambiguity about whether to impeach and no ambiguity about whether to remove.
And, likewise, if impeachment and removal are political processes that are too complicated to resolve in Congress then - like everything else - they should be delegated out to an external agency. Congress has given away its powers before and there’s nothing to say that they can’t do so with impeachment and removal. Maybe you can’t give those to the Executive branch but, Congress can and does form its own professional agencies like the CBO and the OTA. And maybe you can’t let them make the big decisions, but you might be able to do a straight up or down, fifty-fifty vote on following their advice to make it more achievable.
