Supreme Court Adopts Its First Formal Code of Ethics Amid Criticism Over Gifts and Travel

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it has adopted a code of ethics for the first time, responding to months of criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts that some justices accepted from wealthy benefactors.

The policy was agreed to by all nine justices. It does not appear to place any significant new requirements on them, and in an unsigned statement the justices said they have long followed ethics standards. They wrote that the lack of a formal code had fostered "the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules." The new code, they said, "largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct."

The code leaves compliance up to the justices and creates no other mechanism for enforcement.

The ethics question has dogged the court for several months, driven by a series of news stories. Many centered on Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel and other financial ties to wealthy conservative donors, including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor have also faced scrutiny.

The push was jump-started by reporting from the investigative news site ProPublica on the relationship between Crow and Thomas. According to that reporting, Crow has paid for nearly annual vacations for more than two decades, bought the Georgia home where the justice's mother still lives from Thomas and others, and helped pay for a relative's private schooling. ProPublica also reported on Alito's Alaskan fishing trip with a Republican donor, travel that conservative activist Leonard Leo helped arrange. The Associated Press reported that Sotomayor, with help from her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.

Three justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh, have voiced support for an ethics code in recent months. In May, Chief Justice John Roberts said the court could do more to "adhere to the highest ethical standards," but offered no specifics. A Gallup poll released shortly before the court's term began on Oct. 2 found public trust in and approval of the court hovering near record lows.

The court's first step on the issue, in the spring, did not satisfy critics. Roberts declined an invitation from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to testify before the panel. He instead provided a "Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices," signed by all nine justices, describing the rules they follow on travel, gifts and outside income. It promised some small additional disclosure when a justice sits out a case, but the justices have been inconsistent in doing so since.

Durbin said as recently as last week that the justices could ease some of the criticism, and a Democratic push to impose a code on the court, by adopting their own policy. His committee has been planning to subpoena Crow and Leo over their roles in organizing and paying for justices' luxury travel.

The committee has been investigating the court's ethics and passed its own ethics code, though all 10 Republicans on the panel voted against it. Republicans argued that Democrats were mostly reacting to decisions they disliked from the conservative-dominated court, including overturning the nationwide right to an abortion.

The Democratic proposal would require justices to give more information about potential conflicts of interest and allow impartial panels of judges to review decisions not to step aside from cases. It would also demand public, written explanations for decisions not to recuse, improve transparency around gifts, and set up a process to investigate and enforce violations of disclosure requirements. The bill had little chance of becoming law in the Republican-controlled House, much less the closely divided Senate.