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Friday, April 7th, 2023

Clarence Thomas and the Ethical Disaster of the Supreme Court Undisclosed gifts from billionaires won’t even embarrass the right.

Author:     Jonathan Chait
Source:     New York Magazine
Publication Date:     6 April 2023 | 11:45 A.M.
 Link: Clarence Thomas and the Ethical Disaster of the Supreme Court Undisclosed gifts from billionaires won’t even embarrass the right.
Stephan:  

Clarence Thomas’ corruption is, I think, unparalleled in American history. And that is without considering his wife, Ginni, who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from far-right groups, and who actively worked to overthrow democracy. And now this. How it is possible that neither Congress nor the Court seems to have the integrity to establish any integrity standards for the U.S. Supreme Court justices? This is the only court in the United States, and the only supreme court in the developed world, having no integrity standards, and it gives us a measure of how corrupt the American government has become.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas who never should have been made a justice and who may be the most corrupt justice in American history. Credit: Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty

One of the oddest features of the American constitutional order is that it cedes the greatest level of power to the branch of government with the weakest ethical constraints. The judicial branch can, by majority vote, override any law passed by the other two branches, even those requiring supermajority support. Yet the justices of the Supreme Court, whose authority is total, do not even need to follow the ethical rules imposed on lower-ranking judges. The assumption, if there is any, is that, having ascended to the highest point in the legal-political hierarchy, the forces of corruption and influence that tug at everybody else within the system cease to operate.

The most glaring example of the Supreme Court’s ethical vacuum is Clarence Thomas. The right-wing justice has operated, in conjunction with his wife, in the center of a network of conservative activists whose project is indistinguishable from his […]

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2 Comments

  1. Sam Crespi on Friday, April 7, 2023 at 6:04 am

    I believe the Thomas affair has been widely known by many. It’s bee written up for a long time in the news. And let us not forget Anita Hill.

    • Rev. Dean on Friday, April 7, 2023 at 11:37 am

      You are correct, Sam. We should have a change in the Supreme Court which makes half of the Justices Democratic and half of them Republican, since this is such a divided country. This would even things out a little. We also make the Justices be in four a four year term limit, not for life, because that is absurd! They also should be elected to their position, not put in place by any government officials, especially the President!