Justice Samuel Alito says Congress lacks the power to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court. He becomes the first member of the court to take a public stand against proposals in Congress to toughen ethics rules for the justices.
Luckily it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that Congress has the ability to impeach and remove. Assuming the Executive is on board, who’s going to stop them?
I mean, who did the founders think would be interpreting “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “good behaviour” when it came to impeaching members of the Court? Of course it’s Congress.
And the thing is, there are already laws on the books forcing justices to recuse in such scenarios, so they could impeach tomorrow and not even have to spend much energy on “high crimes and misdemeanors” or “imposing a code of ethics”. The problem is that the political capital for impeachment isn’t there, so even if the Dems successfully pass their ethics code, it will be toothless.
Luckily it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that Congress has the ability to impeach and remove. Assuming the Executive is on board, who’s going to stop them?
I mean, who did the founders think would be interpreting “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “good behaviour” when it came to impeaching members of the Court? Of course it’s Congress.
And the thing is, there are already laws on the books forcing justices to recuse in such scenarios, so they could impeach tomorrow and not even have to spend much energy on “high crimes and misdemeanors” or “imposing a code of ethics”. The problem is that the political capital for impeachment isn’t there, so even if the Dems successfully pass their ethics code, it will be toothless.