Above the Law, Literally

The Supreme Court

Every federal judge in the United States operates under a binding code of conduct. Every single one, except nine. The nine people with the most power in the American legal system have spent the better part of two centuries answering to no one but themselves, and the country is only recently, reluctantly, starting to reckon with what that actually means.

The Supreme Court had been the only court in the country without a binding ethics code. That changed in November 2023, when the Court released a code of conduct governing the behavior of the country's most powerful judges for the first time in its history. The justices adopted it not because they agreed they needed rules, but to "dispel" what they called public "misunderstanding" that they regarded themselves as unrestricted. That framing alone should tell you everything.

The code contains no mechanism to enforce its rules. There is no arbiter to apply or even interpret them. The justices will still judge themselves. Federal judges at the district and circuit level face oversight panels composed of other judges who review misconduct allegations. The Supreme Court's code is entirely separate from that system. Filing a complaint against a sitting justice goes precisely nowhere.

The 2023 code did not emerge from some sudden institutional conscience. It came out of a scandal. A sprawling, embarrassing, extensively documented scandal. For over two decades, Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury vacations from billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, including international yacht cruises and private jet flights, none of which appeared on his financial disclosures. In 2014, one of Crow's companies purchased properties from Thomas, his mother, and his late brother's family for $133,363. Crow also covered private school tuition for a relative Thomas was raising as a son, potentially exceeding $150,000 across four years at two schools. Thomas initially denied any disclosure obligation. Then, after sustained public pressure, he amended his 2019 financial disclosure and wrote that he had "inadvertently omitted" the trips.

Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, accepted a luxury fishing trip to Alaska in 2008, flown there on a private jet by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. If Alito had chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way. In the years following, Singer's hedge fund came before the court at least ten times. In one 2014 case, Alito sided with the majority in Singer's favor, resulting in a $2.4 billion settlement paid to Singer's fund. Alito never recused himself from any of those cases. Ethics experts said they had never encountered another example of a Supreme Court justice sitting on a case after receiving an expensive gift from one of the parties.

Justice Samuel Alito stated plainly that Congress has no authority to regulate the Supreme Court: "No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period." Chief Justice John Roberts has questioned, more cautiously, the constitutionality of the two ethics laws already on the books that explicitly apply to justices. The argument, stripped of its legal dressing, is that the most powerful court in the country should be exempt from the accountability structures it imposes on everyone else.

The New York City Bar Association conducted a comprehensive review and concluded that Congress does, in fact, have the constitutional authority to act through the Necessary and Proper Clause, which grants Congress the power to enact laws necessary to carry into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in any branch of government. Congress has introduced legislation. The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, reintroduced in 2025, would require justices to adopt a binding code with an enforcement mechanism, create a process for investigating violations, mandate transparency standards on gifts and travel, and require disclosure of who funds amicus briefs. It has not passed.

Two years after the code's release, justices still do not explain why they recuse or decline to recuse from cases. In the October 2024 term, only two justices publicly noted the reason for any recusal. Six others simply stepped aside without explanation. The court has not confirmed whether it has ever conducted the "examination of best practices" in judicial ethics that the code's own commentary promised to undertake. Requests for answers have gone unanswered.

Chief Justice Roberts has declined multiple congressional invitations to testify about Supreme Court ethics, citing separation of powers and judicial independence. The Court used both of those principles to build the current system. It is also using them to make sure no one touches it.

There is no appeal above the Supreme Court.

Every other federal judge in the country operates under the threat of reversal. Their rulings get challenged, their conduct gets reviewed, their conflicts get flagged by someone above them in the chain. The Supreme Court sits at the top of that chain, which means the oversight apparatus that governs every courtroom in America stops exactly one level below the people who need it most. A district judge who accepts a luxury vacation from a litigant faces a misconduct panel. A Supreme Court justice who does the same faces nothing, because there is no court above the Supreme Court to say otherwise.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2026 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.

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