From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The Supreme Court Control Act   
   By The Editorial Board, July 16, 2023, WSJ   
      
   The Supreme Court has finished its business for the summer, but Senate   
   Democrats never finish trashing the Justices. The Judiciary Committee that   
   scoured Brett Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook is preparing to pass new   
   rules under the guise of ethics    
   reform that are intended to put the Justices on a political leash.   
      
   The effort is led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and his more senior   
   political front man, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin. They’re playing off   
   recent media reports that claim ethics violations without showing any real   
   violations. But that’s    
   enough of an excuse for claiming to want to protect the Court’s reputation   
   while actually destroying it.   
      
   Their Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act would require the   
   Court to establish a Code of Conduct within 180 days. It would also set   
   disclosure rules for “gifts, income, and reimbursements required to be   
   disclosed under the Standing    
   Rules of the Senate and the Rules of the House of Representatives.â€�   
      
   Treating judges like Members of Congress is exactly the wrong model to follow.   
   The nine Justices are appointees with lifetime tenure under the Constitution   
   in order to insulate them from political pressure. Legislators are political   
   actors accountable to    
   voters for their relationships with campaign contributors and interest groups.   
      
   The Senate ethics scheme would drop the Justices into a new political   
   maelstrom. The bill invites ethics complaints alleging that a Justice violates   
   the new rules or “has otherwise engaged in conduct that undermines the   
   integrity of the Supreme Court.†  
   � That open-ended standard is an invitation to groups on the left and right to   
   file endless complaints against the Justices to create the appearance of   
   wrongdoing or conflicts of interest.   
      
   The complaints would be handled by a five-member panel of chief judges from   
   the circuit courts. That would further politicize the judiciary by asking   
   lower-court judges to rule on the ethics of Justices who decide whether to   
   hear appeals of their rulings.   
    The judges would be under enormous pressure to act against Justices with a   
   different judicial philosophy.   
      
   The bill also lays out “circumstances requiring disqualificationâ€� to hear   
   a case—more commonly known as recusal. The Justices currently make their own   
   decisions on recusal based on relatively narrow criteria such as whether they   
   have a financial    
   interest in a case. Political demands for recusal are becoming more common,   
   but most can be ignored.   
      
   The Senate bill sets up a process for a three-judge panel of judges to review   
   a “motionâ€� by a party for recusal. Such motions would proliferate, as the   
   parties and interests angle to eliminate a Justice they think might rule   
   against them. The    
   Democratic goal here is thinning the Court on a case by case basis to   
   influence decisions. It’s a different means than packing the Court by adding   
   Justices, but the purpose is similar.   
      
   The Founders anticipated this political temptation, which is why they created   
   the judiciary as a separate and co-equal branch of government under Article   
   III. While Congress established the lower federal courts, the Constitution   
   created the Supreme Court,   
    which sets its own rules. Congress has no constitutional power to tell the   
   Justices how to run the Court.   
      
   The supposed justification for this radical remaking of the Court is a series   
   of media articles that reveal little more than that Justices have rich   
   friends. They have on occasion even flown on private jets, oh my. In the   
   latest supposed scandal, the    
   staff of Justice Sonia Sotomayor is reported to have encouraged the sale of   
   her books coinciding with her appearances at universities. In none of these   
   cases has anyone found a real conflict of interest involving the Justices and   
   a case or ruling.   
      
   The partisan nature of this exercise is clear from the one-sided efforts at   
   fact-finding. Last week Messrs. Whitehouse and Durbin sent a letter to Leonard   
   Leo, who advised President Trump on judicial nominations and is friends with   
   some of the    
   conservative Justices.   
      
   The letter requests “an itemized list of all gifts, payments, and items of   
   value . . . to any Justice of the Supreme Court or a member of the Justice’s   
   family which you had a role in facilitating or arranging.â€� We could find no   
   evidence of similar    
   curiosity about the liberal Justices and their friends.   
      
   Damaging the Court has been Mr. Whitehouse’s explicit goal since   
   progressives lost their majority and the Court as a second legislature. In   
   2019 he and four other Senate Democrats wrote a notorious amicus brief in a   
   gun-rights case that said “the    
   Supreme Court is not well.â€� The brief threatened, mob-style, that if the   
   Court didn’t “heal itself,â€� it might have to be “restructured.â€�   
      
   Democrats don’t currently have the votes to break the Senate filibuster and   
   pack the Court, but watch out when they do. Meantime, their ethics ruse is an   
   attempt to intimidate and control the Justices by other means. It deserves to   
   be called out as a    
   betrayal of the Constitution that would destroy judicial independence.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-supreme-court-control-act-white   
   ouse-durbin-recusal-ethics-1b2e9bd3   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)