Here’s what you need to know about how judges usually dealt with discharge issues and where Thomas fits into this pattern:
When are judges required to be acquitted?
The Supreme Court is subject to the same statute which stipulates that all federal judges are excluded from disputes where “their impartiality can reasonably be challenged.” The statutes also specify the types of financial conflicts that require judges to be removed from cases. However, judges do not use the same procedures as lower court judges to ensure compliance with the law. While decisions to disqualify a lower court may be challenged by the parties and reviewed by higher courts, there is no such accountability mechanism for the Supreme Court. There was also little transparency about how judges weigh these issues, as they usually do not explain why they did not participate in cases – leaving court observers to guess what may have led to the waivers. “The Supreme Court has indeed been overturned,” Amanda Frost, a law professor at the American University in Washington, told CNN earlier this year. “They are very used to not being transparent on many different issues on many different fronts.”
When did judges resign in the past?
A review of court records in recent years shows that, out of the thousands of reports that judges receive each year for Supreme Court intervention, judges have resigned from about 150-200 cases each year. Without any explanation from the judges, it is not always clear what led to the denials. There are usually about 10-20 reports each year, according to Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, an organization that pushes for transparency reviews across the federal judiciary, where a judge does not appear to be involved because he or she has a financial stake in a company. associated with the case. Judges list their shares in financial disclosure forms that are published annually. It also appears that the involvement of judges – in roles they played before joining the Supreme Court – in cases while the trial was at an earlier stage led to dismissals. These types of exemptions are also defined by the articles of association. It is not uncommon for justice for Elena Kagan to be forced out of a case, possibly because of her job as a U.S. attorney general. Likewise, several judges have been acquitted of cases in which they played a role when they were judges of lower courts. For example, then Judge Anthony Kennedy dismissed a case in 2018 because he was exposed before him in 1985, when he was a second instance judge. The pattern becomes darker, however, in cases where a family connection has prompted justice to consider acquittal. Judge Stephen Breyer will recall some of the cases previously heard by his brother, a federal judge in California, but not others. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has heard cases involving his father’s work as a lobbyist for the cosmetics industry. However, Judge Amy Coney Barrett did not drop a climate change lawsuit against Shell Oil, her father’s longtime employer. Shell Oil was on Barrett’s list of disputes when she was a second instance judge. Such lists are used by case assignment software used in lower courts to remove cases from judges who may have potential conflicts. Ethics experts say there are legitimate reasons for Supreme Court justices to take a narrower approach to potential conflicts than lower court judges, as there are only nine of them and they are the last stop for the most important legal issues in the country. . “If you are a lower court judge, you should have a broader discharge list, in theory because you are more exchangeable at this level, you can be replaced,” Roth told CNN earlier this year.
When did Thomas resign?
Thomas’s own dismissal record is sparse. The court records from his time on the bench until 2020 show 32 issues in which he showed that he did not participate, according to a review of the Roth archives. In particular, one of these layoffs was in a 1995 case challenging the admission policy of men exclusively at the Virginia Military Institute, which Thomas’s son was attending at the time. Thomas also had to amend the financial disclosures to correct omissions regarding his wife’s employment. He said in 2011 that the omissions were unintentional and “due to a misunderstanding of the deposit instructions”. Roth said earlier this year that there was no history parallel to the ethical issues now being raised by Ginny Thomas’s behavior. “No spouse, as far as I know, has ever actively pressured other branches of government in the public sphere for issues before judges such as Ginny Thomas,” Roth said.
Should Thomas have withdrawn from the January 6 case already before the court?
Whether Thomas has already violated the code of conduct in the January 6 case is a matter of ongoing debate. Among his defenders are Michael Davis, chairman of the Conservative Article III plan and former chief adviser to the Senate Justice Committee. “It’s completely unclear what the moral charge is,” Davis told CNN, describing as “trivial and funny” the demands that Thomas withdraw from the adjacent January 6 cases. “Ginny Thomas was not running for president or vice president and was not working for the Trump administration,” said Davis. “There was no personal interest in either Judge Thomas or Ginny who would raise any moral issue.” Republicans in Congress also see no cause for concern. South Dakota Sen. Whip John Thune said she was “confident Judge Thomas would act impartially,” while North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis – who is on the panel – also defended Thomas’s involvement in January 6 – relevant cases. “It would be like your credibility as a reporter is being undermined by the comments of important others on Twitter,” Tillis said. The controversy was Trump’s request to prevent the court from delivering some of the White House documents sought by the House of Representatives committee on January 6. Thomas was the only judge to publicly say he disagreed with a court move in January to clear the documents. For Democrats, new revelations about Ginny Thomas’s connection to Trump’s overthrow plan are at best “worrying” and many have gone further, arguing that Clarence Thomas should be excluded from Capitol breach cases. or Trump’s efforts to overthrow the election. Several court’s ethics experts agreed, noting that – even if Ginny Thomas’s writings were not among the documents played in the January controversy – her communications with Meadows made her part of the campaign to overthrow the president’s victory. Joe Biden in 2020. “This effort envisioned the Supreme Court appeals as a possible strategy, and in fact there were such appeals, in which Clarence Thomas was involved,” Stephen Gillers, an ethics fellow at New York University Law School, told CNN. He chose to be part of the “Stop the Steal” effort. “
What can Congress do?
Some Democrats are already arguing that Congress is taking a more formal step in the debate. “We need ethics legislation,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Tuesday, adding later, ». Others go further, such as New York MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is pushing for impeachment proceedings against Thomas if he refuses to step down. Georgia MP Hank Johnson, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee overseeing the courts, is also calling for Thomas to resign. Senate Justice President Dick Darbin of Illinois said Tuesday that ethics legislation for the Supreme Court is “too late,” but warned that any inquiry into Thomas by his committee would have to wait until the break. Easter’s. Easter is the deadline set by Democrats to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. The chairman of the Democratic House of Representatives in New York, Hakeem Jeffries, said he hoped the Justice Committee would “investigate areas of its jurisdiction related to the moral conduct of Supreme Court justices.” “We have three distinct and equal branches of government and we need to look at the momentum that has emerged from the communication between Mrs Thomas and the former White House Chief of Staff,” said Jeffries, a member of the House Justice Committee. . Some legal scholars, however, believe that – apart from the reference – there may be some limits to how Congress can legislate on this issue. Some scholars have suggested that there may be constitutional restrictions on Congress’ ability to regulate the U.S. Supreme Court – a debate in which Chief Justice John Roberts nodded in 2011 in a year-end note that tacitly rejected calls for legislation. implements a code of the Supreme Court of conduct. “Congress may not have the exact tools to motivate unruly judges to behave ethically,” concluded a 2019 Congressional Research Service analysis. establish rules for good judicial conduct that guide the actions of judges “. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly mentioned the year in which Kennedy became involved in a case as a second instance judge from which he later resigned as a Supreme Court justice. The case had …
