WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) delivered a floor speech yesterday encouraging the passage of the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, a bill that would – for the first time – require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding and enforceable code of ethics.
Senator Coons highlighted recent polling that shows the American people are losing confidence in the independence of the Supreme Court. The failure of some justices to disclose millions of dollars’ worth of trips and gifts, as well as the repeated display of political signs on residential property, have contributed to the Supreme Court’s declining standing in public opinion. Despite these concerns, Supreme Court justices are not bound by an enforceable code of conduct, unlike every other federal judge.
In his speech, Senator Coons urged the passing of the SCERT Act as a way to restore the standing of the Supreme Court and bolster public confidence in the integrity of its rulings.
A full transcript is available below:
Senator Coons: Mr. President, I rise to urge this body to reconsider the objection that was just made by my colleagues.
The rule of law – the system of ordered liberty for which so many Americans have served and sacrificed at home and abroad – is a fragile thing. It is at times a mere tissue, and it is held together by the confidence of our people in the ethics and integrity of those whom they elect, or who are appointed, nominated, [and] confirmed to serve them.
We’ve seen a number of challenging chapters around ethics and integrity and public service recently, but tonight, we’re on this floor to speak about our Supreme Court, and a simply shocking series of revelations about ways in which justices have accepted, over years, huge amounts of gifts.
The suggestion has been made by a number of my colleagues that this is just Democrats – that this is just a partisan attack on a few justices to try and roll back or undermine decisions they’ve made that we dislike, or their legitimacy.
Well, I can give you a compelling counterpoint. My friend and colleague, Senator [John] Cornyn [R-Texas], and I – seeing a whole series of stories in The Wall Street Journal in 2021 that revealed that there were dozens of federal judges who had stock holdings in companies where issues before them implicated the value of that company – moved us to introduce the bipartisan Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act. Your typical bill takes six, seven, eight years to become law here in the Senate. This one moved faster than almost any other, and on the Senate Judiciary Committee and here on the floor of the Senate, nobody argued that the Supreme Court needed to be above it all. Nobody argued that the justices of the Supreme Court shouldn’t be required to disclose their stock holdings and be accountable for their failures; to recuse or disclose. In fact, that bill passed unanimously. Why, then, is this one not similarly situated?
Every federal judge is subjected to a binding code of ethics; every Senator; virtually every federal employee of a senior decision-making role is bound by a code of ethics. That’s how the American people know that if there is some slight or fault, some self-dealing, or some action that creates the appearance of impropriety, that action will be taken. After months and months and months of reports of misconduct, failure to disclose questionable conduct by a justice or two of the Supreme Court, a recent poll by Marquette [University] shows that a majority of the American people have lost faith in this institution and no longer have confidence in the political independence and the ethics of our Supreme Court.
Mr. Chief Justice, I hope you listen or watch. We believe you to be concerned about the legitimacy of this important institution. The Supreme Court is the only federal court not bound by a code of conduct that is enforceable and where these disclosures and their consequences cannot be acted upon. The highest court in our land should not have the lowest ethical standards. We should take a vote on this bill, the Supreme Court Ethics Recusal and Transparency Act.
It should not be controversial or partisan. This isn’t about attacking one justice or another. As someone who clerked for a federal judge, as someone whose chief counsel clerked for a federal judge – many of us are lawyers in this body and clerked for federal judges – we know the importance of having an independent judiciary, of having a nonpartisan judiciary, and the most powerful court in the land is the Supreme Court. When it issued landmark decisions unanimously, it moved the arc of history. Today, it issues decision after decision that are 5-4 and that are producing challenging secondary waves in our body politic. If the Supreme Court is to hold the role that our framers intended, it must do so above reproach. That is not where we are today. Our Supreme Court must make itself accountable to the American people. We shouldn’t read disclosure after disclosure in the press to learn about the conduct of the justices.
Just a few moments ago, earlier this evening, along with the rest of the Delaware delegation, I had the honor of meeting with the newest nominees to our nation’s service [academies]. Young men and women who are raising the right hand and volunteering to serve our nation, who will be granted the opportunity at a free education in exchange for which they sign on the dotted line and agree to go serve our nation at home and abroad, and to defend our nation and our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I’ve just completed a trip to the South Pacific, where I visited Manila [Philippines], and there, there is a World War II cemetery that includes crosses marking the graves of 17,000 Americans who served and sacrificed in the convulsion that was the Second World War. Those crosses do not mark on them “Democrat” or “Republican.” The freedom for which they fought, the system of justice, the rule of law, the Constitution, for which they took up arms against Imperial Japan and worked so tirelessly alongside our allies to free a world under assault from fascism and imperialism, [they] did not do so based on a sense of partisan principles but out of a commitment to our nation.
We should honor those who served and sacrificed, a generation or two ago, and those who are willing to serve and sacrifice today going forward, by restoring ethics and transparency to the United States Supreme Court. They have cast a shameful shadow; not just the appearance of impropriety but a genuine conflict. It can be resolved. We must help them take the action they should take and resolve it. We should pass this bill.