On Nov. 13, the Supreme Court acceded to public pressure and finally issued a code of conduct, a step that the lower federal courts had taken in 1973. It was not without a bit of needless rancor.

In an introductory “Statement of the Court,” the justices grudgingly allowed that the new Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States was promulgated only to correct what they called the public’s “misunderstanding” of the ethics principles “we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”

Despite the justices’ insistence that the code only restates their existing “common law” ethics rules, there are, in fact, provisions that revise or contradict several of the court’s previous statements and practices, for better or worse.

Earlier this year, Chief Justice John Roberts flatly declined to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the proposed Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023, invoking “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

Canon 4A(2) of the new code, however, appears to specifically endorse such testimony, with no exception for the chief justice, stating that a justice “may appear at a public hearing before an executive or legislative body . . . on matters concerning the law, the legal system, or the administration of justice.”

While congressional testimony is still at a justice’s discretion, the new provision clearly undermines Roberts’s claim that testimony on any proposed legislation —........

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