The U.S. Supreme Court is in trouble, and it goes deeper than Justice Clarence Thomas’ current mess. It goes to the very heart of faith, transparency and trust in the court.

It’s time for the Supreme Court to take ethics seriously. And we citizens must demand that the nine judges act with the loftiest ideals and full transparency. 

While Thomas — who has served over 31 years on the court — would have us believe that he loved to vacation in RV parks, we learned recently that he and his wife traveled through Indonesia aboard real estate magnate billionaire and large GOP donor Harlan Crow’s 162-foot yacht, vacationed almost every summer at his luxurious New York resort and flew on his private plane around the world on trips worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Crow even bought the Thomas family house and two surrounding vacant lots where Thomas grew up.  

Oh, by the way: Thomas sat on a case concerning Crow’s family’s business, heard before the Supreme Court, but didn’t recuse himself.   

All this perceived misbehavior has prompted calls for clear ethics standards for the Supreme Court. Besides the Thomas conflicts, here are a few more examples where current Supreme Court justices have bent, if not broken, the law. 

The court leaked a draft of the Dobbs decision last year that overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion decision long before it was issued. 

The court’s investigation of the Dobbs leak failed to find the source or motives for such an action — and the only people who did not have to take an oath regarding their claims of innocence were the justices and their spouses. 

In another case, a whistle-blower claimed there had been a second abortion-related leak, this one to right-wing anti-abortion groups prior to the Hobby Lobby decision dealing with women’s contraceptive care. 

Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas, strategized with the White House about overturning the 2020 election. Thomas was the only justice to vote to withhold White House records involved in that effort from the Jan. 6 committee. He declined to recuse himself from that case.

Politico recently reported Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre tract of property to the chief executive of a law firm that had business before the court without naming the buyer on his financial disclosure form. 

The New York Times reported that Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, “has made millions in her career recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court.” 

Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a letter dated April 20, summoned John Roberts to appear before that committee on Tuesday, May 2, to testify at a public hearing about the ethical rules that govern the Supreme Court judges and about potential reforms. Durbin pointed out that the last significant discussion about how Supreme Court justices should address ethical issues was presented in the 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. 

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards that are expected of all judges and of public servants generally. Durbin said these problems already were apparent back in 2011 and the Supreme Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. 

The latest Justice Thomas scandal isn’t about breaking the law. It’s more about how broken the Supreme Court’s ethics standards are today. The Supreme Court justices have no code of conduct for themselves. All other district, circuit court and federal judges are bound by Canon 2(a) of the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges. 

Canon 2(a) of the code states that a judge should avoid “impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities” when reasonable minds would conclude that judges’ honesty, integrity, impartiality, temperaments or fitness to serve as a judge are impaired.

The Supreme Court exists in an ethical no man’s land. Many Americans have lost faith in the courts because of recent Supreme Court behaviors, with 43% saying they have hardly any confidence in the court. It was under 27% at the beginning of last year. 

President Joe Biden has done his part to begin Supreme Court reform through Executive Order #14023, establishing the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, which issued its findings in 2021. 

One major suggestion was that the court should adopt a formal Model Code of Conduct for U.S. Supreme Court justices, which the American Bar Association also seeks.

Congress recently introduced the Supreme Court Ethics Act, a bill whose provisions call for a statutory requirement to issue a code of conduct that applies to the Supreme Court, direct the Supreme Court to establish an Ethics and Investigations Council that examines if judges’ actions have violated a code of conduct, requires judges who have recused themselves from a case to disclose their reasons why, and more. 

Both liberal and conservative justices have been called to task over such behaviors as making anonymous leaks to reporters, participating in industry-funded seminars, accepting personal gifts, praising or criticizing political candidates, vacationing with donors who have cases pending before the court, and sitting in on cases where their spouses announce strong opinions about the underlying controversies and issues before the court. 

Besides the Supreme Court needing to adopt a code of ethics, it also needs to better clarify its financial disclosure standards, impose term limits, publish recusal decisions (explaining why a justice had to recuse himself or herself), have more public engagement, come into the 21st century with such measures as allowing cameras on occasion in the courtroom to increase public access, and more transparency and understanding of the court’s proceedings. Above all, it must instill transparency and a better understanding of court proceedings. 

The truth is that the Supreme Court has been too caught up in its own notion of judicial supremacy to agree to police itself. Maybe that’s why other branches of government need to be involved. 

Supreme Court justices occupy a unique and powerful space in our system of government. In return, they must, at minimum, hold themselves to the highest standards of conduct. Adoption of a model code of ethics applicable to all federal judges and the Supreme Court would ensure that it addresses and maintains the unique role of Supreme Court justices. 

The lack of ethical standards has resulted in a crisis of trust in the nation’s highest court.

Jim Martin can be reached at jimmartinesq@gmail.com. This column was first published in the Daily Camera.