Justice Clarence Thomas has secretly accepted luxury trips from a major Republican donors

This is a serious understatement. Lawyers and judges have ethics training yearly. They should know what behavior is and is not ethical. They should not even need to ask others. Yet …

 

I don't care what the Justices do in their personal lives. Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg hung out and went hunting together and what not. That didn't make me like what RBG did on the court more, or Scalia less. My concern is what they do professionally. Thomas is the most consistently in support of the Constitution, and not some reinterpretation of what we want the Constitution to mean now. Because that is the basis of him being my favorite justice, he does remain so, and will even if he is removed, because of providing a Constitutional anchor for decades.

The California State Bar (and those of other states I assume) has an ethics hotline, specifically to be able to ask others what behavior is and is not ethical.

 

I'm curious. Do you think Thomas should've recused himself in Bush v Gore considering his son was working for the Bush campaign? Should Thomas recuse himself in cases where his wife has been openly advocating the position of the litigants such as some of the election law cases?

 

Interesting. I understand that at one layer of analysis. But I'd suggest he knowingly risked the credibility of the court and his own work with this reckless acceptance of gifts and paid travel. Comparing that to a (mostly welcome) friendship between philosophically differing justices seems odd to me. (I hope nobody downgraded Scalia in their thinking just because he had the breadth of spirit to befriend a more liberal person.)

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I liked RBG's opinion-making on the court. I did not like her eventual public political statements, because that reflected poorly on the court and her own work, in my opinion. I also did not like her stubborn will to stay on the bench until her death, given that it helped undo some of her decades of work, and she had to understand that risk. Both of those events (outside her actual judicial work) downgraded my opinion of her.

Not an argument at all, and you're welcome to judge justices precisely on their work of course. But Thomas appears to have absorbed the attitude of the very wealthy and most powerful in America -- ah to heck with appearances. what are the plebes gonna do anyway?

 

No on the Ginni Thomas issue. Just because your wife has an opinion on an issue, that doesn't mean you cannot be fair. I'm sure all of the Justices have friends and family that have opinions on issues. If that called for recusal, no one could hear a case.

No on the Bush v. Gore issue. There is a judge in my local court who's son-in-law works for the district attorney's office. He doesn't hear cases his SIL participates in, but otherwise has no difficulty handling cases in which the office his son works for is a party (ie all criminal cases in the county).

 

From 2011...


https://archive.thinkprogress.org/s...on-record-before-justice-thomas-1aaf50c21db8/

Crow served on CCI’s board alongside failed Bush judicial nominee Miguel Estrada. Westlaw’s database of Supreme Court briefs reveals eight briefs filed by CCI in eight different Supreme Court cases, and Justice Thomas voted for CCI’s preferred outcome in every single one of these cases:

• City of Chicago v. Morales: The lower court struck down a law “making it illegal for members of criminal gangs to loiter and fail to obey an order to disperse.” CCI asked the Court to reverse that decision, and Justice Thomas wrote a dissent saying that he would reverse.
• Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott: The lower court struck down a parole board’s warrantless search of a parolee’s residence. CCI asked the Court to reverse that decision, and Justice Thomas wrote the 5–4 decision reversing.
• Dickerson v. U.S.: The lower court upheld a statute cutting at the core of accused defendant’s Miranda rights. CCI asked the Court to affirm this decision. Justice Thomas joined a dissent which would have affirmed.
• U.S. v. Knights: The lower court struck down the warrantless search of a probationer’s residence. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.
• U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development v. Rucker: The lower court ruled in favor of public housing tenants who were evicted because their resident family members or caregivers violated drug laws. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.
• Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe: The lower court struck down a law requiring public disclosure of registered sex offenders. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a decision reversing.
• U.S. v. American Library Ass’n, Inc.: The lower court struck down a federal law requiring many public libraries to use filtering software that prevents web browsers from showing some pornographic material. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined a plurality opinion reversing.
• Devenpeck v. Alford: The lower court held an arrest unconstitutional. CCI asked the Court to reverse. Justice Thomas joined an opinion reversing.

 

I am sure what’s-his-name will now post how these 8 cases fail meet his bar for an ethics violation.

 

Any guesses if you called the CA ethics hotline and told them you are planning to take a million dollar vacation, provided by a “friend” who happens to have court cases before you, what their response might be?

 

I don't think you understand how ethics violations work. The problem is that their interests align. You act like that's an excuse, it's not. It's the problem! You can't take money from someone if "your interests align" in most governmental capacities - that's an ethics violation.

 

You can't tell me this isn't damning and smacks of gross ethics violations:

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/s...on-record-before-justice-thomas-1aaf50c21db8/


And you can't tell me a guy like Harlan Crow, who is a big time real estate developer who has in the past sought to evict people from homes in mass, would not benefit from Thomas's vote to overturn the COVID moratorium on evictions.

There's way too much entanglement between these two for Thomas to be taking any kind of gifts from him, yet he has done so repeatedly, and not just from him, but even from organizations under Crow that were directly involved in cases Thomas voted on.

 

As I said, he should recuse himself from any case in which Crow was a party, and if he didn't he should be removed. I'm reasonably sure the hotline would agree. I have not seen that presented.

That Crow connected think tanks filed amicus briefs in cases is not at that level. Whether or not lack of recusal in such cases is an ethical violation is a tougher question. That presents essentially the notion that because a friend of yours thinks something about a case (or employs people who think something about a case) and that friend has previously given you gifts, you cannot rule on that case. If there had been no formal briefing, but Crow just told Thomas that he didn't think sex offender registries were unconstitutional, would that mean Thomas could not hear the case? What if he told him that while they were on vacation on his yacht?

I don't know the answer to this question. I could see arguments either way. Certainly, if there were some sort of quid pro quo and someone could prove Crow was paying Thomas to rule in favor of the position advocated by AEI on a case, that would be a violation.

 

Thomas is in support of YOUR interpretation of the Constitiuon. His interpretation is the same as yours. Citizens United vs FEC is an interpretation. DC vs Heller. Interpretation. If the Constitution was clear cut there would be no need for the Supreme Court to decide Constitutionality.

 

This is not how it works. Now, you may want it to work in a different manner, but alas ...

There is an ethics violation if a judge's ruling can be questioned wrt outside influence. Don't shoot the messenger here.

 

A judge's ruling can ALWAYS be questioned with regard to outside influence. That's why I said the presented scenario is a harder question. A Justice could, for example, feel a sense of indebtedness to the campaign contributors of the President who appointed them, or to the administration, or to a particular Senator that was instrumental in their confirmation. They could be questioned on the basis of race, religion, or any of a million other possible influences. There is some point where the balance tips from acceptable to unacceptable levels of outside influence. Is one of your friends sitting on the board of a think tank that filed an amicus brief in a case before you on the unacceptable side? Is that changed by the same friend providing lavish gifts? I don't know. Generally speaking, those determinations are left to a judge to decide for themselves, though a party can make a recusal motion.

 

The federal court system polices itself, except for one notable exception.

 

Supreme Court justices are not capable of policing themselves and Americans know it: Steve Schmidt

 

The glaring flaw in the Republicans’ defense of Clarence Thomas

If stating uncontested facts about Clarence Thomas constitutes a “smear,”
that says more about the justice than those concerned about his conduct.

​

GOP officials have largely overlooked Thomas’ other controversies, and it’s likely the party is content to wait for this story to fade from the headlines.

On Saturday, however, Sen. John Cornyn published a message to Twitter, paraphrasing a piece from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, wrote:

But in this instance, the media appears to have published an accurate report on Thomas’ dubious behavior. The justice released a 146-word written statement in response to the controversy, but at no point
did Thomas challenge or contest a single detail of the revelations.

In other words, the story appears to be true. Thomas, several years after joining the Supreme Court, forged close ties with real estate magnate Harlan Crow, who’s repeatedly been excessively generous toward
the conservative jurist. Thomas, in turn, spent years failing to disclose the benefits of his friendship with the Republican megadonor.



the irony is rich, while silent on this smear campaign against a distinguished U of Houston, Sen. John Cornyn is dismissive of the facts surrounding the Thomas controversy