The Supreme Court on Monday issued a new “Code of Conduct” following months of heightened scrutiny from Senate Judiciary Democrats pushing for new ethics laws for the high court.Â
“The undersigned Justices are promulgating this Code of Conduct to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the Members of the Court,” the announcement Monday read.Â
“For the most part these rules and principles are not new: The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice,” the statement reads.Â
SENATE DEMOCRATS TURN UP THE HEAT, ANNOUNCE ‘NEXT STEP’ IN SUPREME COURT ETHICS INVESTIGATION
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“The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct,” it says.Â
