Those who care about the integrity of the Supreme Court should be cautious in advocating for a mandated code of ethics. The highest court in our land should not need a lesson in ethical standards, right?
And yet it's tempting. Of special concern at the moment is Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court. His failure to recuse himself from a recent ruling on White House records is fueling the kind of skepticism toward the court and its impartiality that the justices claim to abhor.
That case concerned efforts by former President Donald Trump to block the release of records surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Although not among the records involved in that dispute, a couple of dozen text messages related to the effort to overturn the election have come to light between Mark Meadows, Trump's last chief of staff, and Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist who happens to be married to Justice Thomas. In those texts following the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas exhorted Meadows to keep up the fight, stall for time, and stop President-elect Joe Biden from assuming office.
