Professors Seek Ethics Code for High Court

More than 100 law professors have asked the House and Senate Judiciary committees to extend a judicial ethics code to the Supreme Court. The move comes on the heels of recent controversies involving members of the court attending political events, The Washington Post reported.

Should the code that governs lower court federal judges be extended to members of the court it would set rules on when justices should recuse themselves from cases that come before the court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have been criticized for attending meetings in 2007 and 2008 sponsored by conservative activists David and Charles Koch, the Post said.

The billionaire businessmen own oil, gas, and paper companies involved in cases in federal court. Connecticut Democratic Representative Christopher Murphy plans to introduce legislation on the matter. The liberal Alliance for Justice’s Nan Aron said that if the rules were extended to cover the Supreme Court, justices would not be able to attend “overtly political meetings or events” like those that Scalia and Thomas attended, the Post said.

In their letter, the law professors said they were seeking “mandatory and enforceable rules to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court.” The letter added that “inexplicably we still allow Supreme Court justices to be the sole judge of themselves on recusal issues,” the Post reported.