Henry Abbott

Supreme Court justices should be the most ethical people in our country. We trust them with the power of judicial review, deciding right from wrong. While over the last few years, many people have grown frustrated with the ideological makeup and decisions of the court, we contend that there is a larger issue being overlooked: Our government has no rules to check our justices.

For centuries, this was not an issue. Justices acted morally, recusing themselves when there was any conflict of interest. Possibly the most admirable instance is Abe Fortas, who, in the 1960s, resigned after reports came out that he was paid $20,000 to consult for a nonprofit while serving as a justice. Fortas felt that it was necessary to resign to maintain the integrity of the court. Flash forward 60 years, and we have a current justice doing much worse and facing no repercussions.

Recently, reports have revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted lavish gifts and luxury trips from billionaires with interests in cases appearing before the nation’s highest court. Between 2004 and 2023, Fix the Court, a judicial reform group, reported that Justice Thomas received 103 gifts totaling $2.4 million. In comparison, all other Supreme Court Justices over that same time period accepted just 93 gifts worth $248,000. While accepting gifts is not illegal, Justice Thomas’ lavish perks from billionaire benefactors raise concerns.

In a recent report, ProPublica disclosed that Justice Thomas accepted numerous undisclosed luxury gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow, a Republican donor with extensive political ties. For the past two decades, Thomas has enjoyed vacations funded by Crow almost yearly, including an international trip on the billionaire’s superyacht. In 2019, Thomas and his wife embarked on a nine-day tour of Indonesia, a trip costing $500,000, and Crow funded the entire trip. Despite these lavish trips being worth astronomical amounts of money, Thomas failed to report them on his financial disclosure forms—a potential violation of federal ethics laws. These arrangements raise concerns about whether Crow’s gifts influenced Thomas’ rulings on cases involving politically aligned interests.

Not to mention, Justice Thomas has recused himself from cases far less frequently than his Supreme Court colleagues, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest. According to court records, Justice Thomas has consistently chosen to participate in cases when other justices might have stepped aside due to perceived biases. This scrutiny has only intensified due to the political activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, who most likely had text messages directly involved with cases surrounding the January 6 insurrection. Her involvement in this event further complicates her husband’s role in decisions involving the January 6 investigation. Despite these personal conflicts, Justice Thomas refused to recuse himself from these cases.

You may be wondering: How is he able to get away with this? The answer: Supreme Court Justices have no rules to follow. The only way to check a Supreme Court Justice is through impeachment, which has only happened once in 1805 and is almost impossible to carry out successfully. What about other federal judges? After Fortas’ resignation, the “Code of Conduct for United States Judges” was adopted to regulate what judges could and could not do. There is only one small caveat: It applies to every federal judge except Supreme Court Justices.

So here we are with a Supreme Court Justice accepting millions of dollars worth of vacations from conservatives who just so happen to have interests in cases appearing before the court. Yet there is no way to punish Thomas for his actions because there are no rules that he has to follow. For too long, we assumed that Supreme Court Justices would act honorably like Fortas did in 1969 when faced with a conflict. We assumed that justices would recuse themselves when faced with conflicts of interest, and for centuries, they did. All it takes is one justice to break from tradition and everything starts to crumble. The Supreme Court is seen as this mystical branch that can do no wrong, but in reality we need to check this ultra-powerful branch to save our society from corrupt justices like Clarence Thomas.