Breaking ranks with most of her colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently came out in favor of an enforceable code of conduct for the U.S. Supreme Court, to replace the unenforceable code issued by the court late last year.
In an interview with CBS News, the newest justice said that she doesn’t “have any problem with an enforceable code,” which is “pretty standard” for courts in the U.S.
She posed the question, “Is the Supreme Court any different?” She concluded that she had “not seen a persuasive reason as to why the court is different than the other courts."
In November, after years of controversy and facing declining public confidence, the U.S. Supreme Court finally adopted a code of conduct, ending its decades-long run as the only court in the country without written ethics rules. The code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, however, has no provision for enforcement, which makes it advisory at best and impotent at worst.
It was surely a coincidence that Jackson announced her support for a binding code in a television interview about her new memoir, “Lovely One.” But as always, the devil is in the details, and the inadequacy of the court’s toothless code can be seen in the otherwise mundane matter of book sales.
Jackson is not the only justice to have........