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.
Think about this for a second: a Supreme Court justice thinks NO ONE has the power to hold them to an ethical standard. I can think of no better reason to hold them to an ethical standard than that.
Yeah really, if a justice literally says checks and balances don’t exist, maybe we should listen and respond accordingly. Also maybe we should fire him, and most of the others.
Exactly. Checks and balances motherfucker! We need to swing the scales back into balance so hard. He and Thomas are launched into orbit and never heard from again. Run over by an orbiting Tesla.
Congress already has a check against SCOTUS, impeachment. Alito is actually probably right here. It would take a constitutional amendment to create a new lever for congress to pull.
Which is complete ass because it will never happen. That document is a failure in the 21st century and is holding us back.
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.
Think about this for a second: a Supreme Court justice thinks NO ONE has the power to hold them to an ethical standard. I can think of no better reason to hold them to an ethical standard than that.
Yeah really, if a justice literally says checks and balances don’t exist, maybe we should listen and respond accordingly. Also maybe we should fire him, and most of the others.
Exactly. Checks and balances motherfucker! We need to swing the scales back into balance so hard. He and Thomas are launched into orbit and never heard from again. Run over by an orbiting Tesla.
Congress already has a check against SCOTUS, impeachment. Alito is actually probably right here. It would take a constitutional amendment to create a new lever for congress to pull.
Which is complete ass because it will never happen. That document is a failure in the 21st century and is holding us back.
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.