Jodi Kantor and Abbie VanSickle, Inside the Supreme Court Ethics Debate: Who Judges the Justices? NYTimes, Dec. 3, 2024.
President Biden and Democratic lawmakers have called for a code with teeth. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson have publicly pledged support for an enforcement mechanism. Outside legal experts have circulated proposals that would enlist the guidance of other federal judges. The conservative pushback has been strong and sometimes furious.
Now the election of former President Donald J. Trump, and a new era of unified Republican government, are raising the stakes for a branch supposed to serve as an independent guardrail. The court, which has a conservative supermajority, is already perceived as partisan by many Americans. And the justices largely appear to be split along the same lines on how far to go to ensure that its rules are followed.
Outside the court, critics say they are trying to bolster trust in the institution by holding the justices to similar standards as lower-court judges. Because no outsiders are involved in enforcing the new code, it lacks “any way to give the justices a chance to look in the mirror,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton and a judicial ethics expert who recently proposed an enforcement plan.
Many conservatives, however, suspect liberals of trying to make ideologically driven incursions on the court. “I’m distrustful of calls for reform or change, because they’re so motivated by antipathy to the current court’s decisions,” said Thomas Griffith, a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush. He and others argued that more stringent oversight could weaken the court’s integrity, because it could be used as a weapon, or give rise to constant warfare about which justices would hear each case.
There's much more at the link.
Putting this in terms of the cognitive ranks account that David Hays and I have developed about cultural evolution, I'd say this is Rank 2 (conservatives) vs. Rank 3 (liberals) thinking about social matters. I don't have time to explain now, but if you're curious, take a look at Politics, Cognition, and Personality (David Hays) and The Evolution of Cognition (Benzon and Hays).
