By: Margo Rawlings

Editor-in-Chief 

A series of principal rulings over the past year have repeatedly put the Supreme Court in the news; these rulings also shed light on new information regarding various justices, making it more crucial than ever to reform the court and revise the court’s Code of Ethics. 

In every history classroom across the nation, students learn that the American government functions within a system of checks and balances. The founding fathers designed each branch of the government to keep the others accountable and avoid corruption. This no longer holds true, as the Judicial branch has been making decisions with few to no checks on its power from the legislative and executive branches. 

President Biden called for creating a new Code of Ethics that would hold justices accountable for their actions, but this is only the first step to reforming the court. Both Justice Clarence Thomas and have faced few consequences for their actions over the past two years. Thomas repeatedly failed to disclose gifts from the last 20 years, totaling more than 2.4 million dollars in physical items and 1.8 million dollars in the form of free trips, both of which directly violate federal law. Republican donor Harlan Crow sponsored many of these trips. Additionally, Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from cases involving his wife’s personal interests. Similarly, Justice Alito refused to remove himself from cases where he held personal bias against one of the parties in the court. Additionally, he associated himself with political paraphernalia, allowing flags that are associated with the Stop the Steal and Appeal to Heaven movements. The fatal flaw in the current Code of Ethics is its inability to hold justices accountable for their actions. The document describes how the justices should conduct themselves, but fails to include the consequences for violation of the Code. Without realistic consequences, the fundamental American process of checks and balances becomes idle. 

To establish accountability for the Supreme Court, Congress must pass The Supreme Court Ethics and Investigations Act, which would create an ethics counsel and an Office of Investigative Counsel to resolve issues of ethics, offer ethics training for justices and their spouses, and provide Congress the power to file ethics complaints. 

Additionally, to create a neutral court that is free from partisan bias, the government must create a new process by which justices are appointed. The current system allows political parties to control the court, creating a partisan structure that undermines what the founders intended the court to be. As President Biden suggested, by instating term limits for justices, where each president may appoint one justice every two years, and each justice may only serve up to an 18-year term; he believes this “would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come.” 

Reform to the Supreme Court is crucial in order to reinstate the people’s trust in the integrity of the justices and the judicial process. 

(Sources: CNBC, The Guardian, Harvard Law Review, Scotus Blog)