Fuzzy Ethical Guidelines For SCOTUS Justices

Some legal observers are calling for more specific ethical guidelines for Supreme Court justices. Though a code of ethics for federal judges has been in place since 1924, “it remains the reality that the Justices of the Supreme Court follow that code only voluntarily,” writes Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center’s constitutional literacy advisor. Supreme Court Justices do not judge each other’s ethical behavior—that task is left to the individual members. In recent years, Justices have had to sell stocks or recuse themselves from cases based on investments, and some called for Justices who had officiated same-sex marriages to abstain from judgment in those cases also. “To some observers, perhaps, right and wrong in judicial behavior is – or should be – clear, definite, and not a matter of individual choice,” Denniston writes. “To others, ethics is in the eye of the beholder, and is a matter of personal conscience.”