The U.S. Supreme Court unveiled its new "Code of Conduct" in much the same way a surly nine-year-old might say, “Fine! I’ll make my bed!”
In a passive-aggressive statement that sounded an awful lot like Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court essentially blamed all of us for misunderstanding just how ethical they already were.
“The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code . . .”
Apparently it was the public misunderstanding the Court’s existing “common law” ethics code that led to the new Code of Conduct—not the fact that Justice Clarence Thomas was living a life of luxury courtesy of a rightwing billionaire.
The new ethics code is filled with language about what a good justice “should” do—not what a justice must do, and what happens if that justice doesn’t act in an ethical manner.