Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. announced Wed that he will not recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases at #SCOTUS after Democratic lawmakers questioned whether he could be impartial following reports that an upside-down #flag flew at his home in the weeks after the… [#insurrection].
The wife of #SCOTUSJusticeSamuel #Alito told a WaPo reporter in Jan 2021 that an #UpsideDown American #flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” & indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute. #MarthaAnnAlito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple’s FairfaxCounty, VA, home to follow up on a tip about the flag….
Justice Clarence Thomas calls criticism of him ‘nastiness’ & ‘lies’
After facing harsh questions about his judicial decisions & accepting lavish gifts from a billionaire, #SCOTUS Justice #ClarenceThomas forcefully pushed back on
his critics Fri — saying he & his wife, #GinniThomas, have endured “nastiness” & “lies.”
The Supreme Court's per curiam opinion pushes Trump's agenda despite the rules of judicial ethics and its limited jurisdiction.
*Thomas join an opinion that grants his wife a right to enjoy a federal office.
*The opinion is a purely advisory opinion on the role of Congress because it's not needed for the result. It's not binding on lower courts. It'll be interesting to see how much attention lower courts give this attempt to legislate. #Law#SupremeCourt#JudicialEthics#FederalCourts
Before law school, Crystal Clanton lived for a year with Clarence and Ginni Thomas. Whatever else is off about Clanton (and there is evidence of more), that connection makes it unethical for C. Thomas to have hired her as a Supreme Court clerk. That is a position of public trust and just the appearance of awarding the post on the basis of a personal relationship is ethically inappropriate. Reporting on the situation: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/clarence-thomas-hires-clerk-crystal-clanton#LawFedi#JudicialEthics
U.S. #law schools should discourage students from applying for clerkships with #ClarenceThomas; faculty should refuse to recommend students for those clerkships; firms and other legal employers should refuse to hire people who have chosen to clerk for Thomas starting this year (when the large extent of his corruption became known). To do otherwise is to be complicit with Thomas’s unethical conduct. #LawFedi#LegalEthics#JudicialEthics
The #SenateJudiciaryCommittee is expected to vote Thursday on a new #ethics code for the #SupremeCourt, an attempt to respond to recent revelations about justices' interactions with wealthy donors & others
“You don’t just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.” Very good column on #JudicialEthics from a federal judge. Gift access
Tax data obtained by @ProPublica provides a glimpse of what congressional investigators would find if Crow were to open his books…. Crow’s voyages w/Thomas, the data shows, contributed to a nice side benefit: They helped reduce Crow’s tax bill.…
Much like war advances medicine, Trump's war on reality with the aid of rogue lawyers and FoxNews has advanced the law of attorney misconduct and defamation.
Let us hope that the SCOTUS Influence Scandals bring us similar advances in Judicial Ethics.
A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?
By Judge Michael Ponsor, snr judge on the US District Court for the District of MA.
“You don’t just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.”
“Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions.”