Senator files ethics complaint against supreme court justice Samuel Alito

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Source: The Guardian

Amid rumbling scandal over gifts given to conservative justices by wealthy rightwing donors, one such justice, Samuel Alito, became the subject of an ethics complaint filed by a senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said recent public comments by Alito “appear to violate several canons of judicial ethics, including standards the supreme court has long applied to itself”. Whitehouse lodged the complaint in a letter to the chief justice, John Roberts.

Alito is an acerbic voice in the conservative bloc that dominates the court, counting Roberts among its members. Earlier this year, Alito was the subject of a report by ProPublica detailing an undeclared fishing holiday with the billionaire Paul Singer. Another conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, has been the subject of multiple reports about undeclared gifts, by ProPublica and other outlets. Both justices deny wrongdoing but Alito has been much more assertive in hitting back at critics.

To Roberts, Whitehouse wrote: “The Wall Street Journal on 28 July 2023 published an interview with Justice Alito conducted by David Rivkin and James Taranto. Justice Alito’s comments during that interview give rise to this complaint.” The interview was headlined “Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court’s Plain-Spoken Defender”. Whitehouse continued: “The interview had the effect, and seemed intended, to bear both on legislation I authored and on investigations in which I participate.

During the interview, Justice Alito stated that ‘no provision in the constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the supreme court – period’. “Justice Alito’s comments appeared in connection to my Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, which the Senate judiciary committee had advanced just one week before … that bill would update judicial ethics laws to ensure the supreme court complies with ethical standards at least as demanding as in other branches of government.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/sep/05/samuel-alito-sheldon-whitehouse-supreme-court-ethics