{"id":603,"date":"2026-09-03T15:14:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T15:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=603"},"modified":"2026-09-03T15:14:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T15:14:19","slug":"court-reform-is-liberal-coded-nowadays-but-it-shouldnt-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=603","title":{"rendered":"Court reform is liberal-coded nowadays. But it shouldn\u2019t be."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Judge temporarily halts Trump\u2019s latest birthright citizenship order<\/a><\/p>\n

In Jan. 2023, a PDF attachment appeared in my inbox: draft legislation requiring the Supreme Court to establish a code of conduct and create the position of Supreme Court ethics counsel to investigate alleged impropriety among the justices.<\/p>\n

The sponsor: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).<\/p>\n

The bill was never introduced, but I bring this up to remind readers of a basic fact: there\u2019s nothing inherently partisan about court reform. Improving transparency and accountability in our historically opaque third branch \u2013 if done right \u2013 would not help one party or another. Instead, reform would result in federal courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, functioning more efficiently, while being led by jurists whose ethical character is rarely in dispute.<\/p>\n

Additional proof comes from recent reform proposals that did make it past the hurdle of introduction.<\/p>\n

In April 2023, a few weeks after ProPublica released its investigation into the lavish gifts accepted by Justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told MSNBC\u2019s Nicolle Wallace, \u201cI think there ought to be an inspector general \u2026 for the judiciary.\u201d Did the senator then start writing IG legislation from scratch? No. He filed a bill that was 99% the same as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the conservative chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had introduced a half dozen times from 2006 to 2017 that established an IG\u2019s office within the judiciary, and which, per the text, would have the ability to \u201cconduct investigations of alleged\u201d misconduct in the Supreme Court. (The remaining 1% of Blumenthal’s 2024 legislation? A nod to the fact that the justices had adopted a code of conduct in the interim, which an IG could also use as a barometer for ethical conduct.)<\/p>\n

Turns out that one of the most obvious solutions to fix the crisis of confidence in Supreme Court ethics already existed \u2013 and had support at one time from leaders in both parties.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not all. In 2018, Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) introduced legislation that would have required the Supreme Court to abide by a formal code of conduct. Also in his bill was a requirement that the SCOTUS clerk post a \u201ctimely notice\u201d of the justices\u2019 recusals \u201con the website of the Supreme Court, along with an explanation for such recusal.\u201d In 2019, Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) introduced the Judicial Travel Accountability Act to narrow the personal hospitality exemption for judges and justices and require them to file detailed disclosures any time they were reimbursed for a trip, as members of Congress do. Each of these reforms later appeared in legislation championed by the soon-to-be chairman or ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even been bipartisan support for more structural reforms. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who have supported proposals to end life tenure at the Supreme Court include Whitehouse and Blumenthal but also count Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) (through judicial retention elections) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) among their ranks. Regarding term limits, another Senate Judiciary Committee member, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), once told The Hill, \u201cI would sure love to have the debate. I don\u2019t know exactly how I would come down, but it\u2019s certainly worth talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

In spite of the examples above, not to mention the fact that reforms like ending life tenure at SCOTUS poll high on the left and on the right, Democrats and Republicans aren\u2019t \u201chav[ing] the debate.\u201d Instead, they\u2019re talking past each other, as that very phrase \u2013 \u201ccourt reform\u201d \u2013 has become liberal-coded, associated with attempts on the left to rein in, dilute, or even remove justices for perceived jurisprudential errors and ethical missteps.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t need to be this way. On balance, court reform \u2013 and especially a complaint review process often referred to as \u201cenforceable ethics\u201d \u2013 would benefit the justices, conservative and liberal alike. On that, as Justice Elena Kagan told a House panel in July, a framework where misconduct allegations are assessed by a panel of respected senior judges would \u201cmake clear that not every accusation [of wrongdoing], not every charge has any [merit] to it.\u201d Nits about the propriety\u00a0of Jane Roberts\u2019\u00a0work, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s party attendance, or Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s Grammys appearance would quickly be dispensed with.<\/p>\n

Read more Will the court consider due process rights for detained migrants?<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, with conservatives winning at the Supreme Court more often than not, it should be conservatives<\/em> who\u2019d want a court whose legitimacy isn\u2019t so often undermined in the public eye by ethics scandals.<\/p>\n

So how has the prospect of court reform become so partisan? To state the obvious, we live in polarized times, and liberals and conservatives\u2019 contrasting views of the court certainly reflect that. Then there\u2019s ProPublica\u2019s investigation of Thomas: if you believe it was overblown (as many Republicans do), you likely view reform efforts not as an effort to make the court more accountable but as a means to denigrate the senior associate justice and his now-ascendant jurisprudence. If you believe the investigation was justified (as many Democrats do), then you\u2019ll likely support reform efforts as a necessary corrective.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, an increased focus on the big-ticket items on progressives\u2019 wish list, namely court expansion, has arguably poisoned the whole enterprise. Expansion is somewhere between deeply unpopular and barely above water with the American public. And accomplishing this would require several conditions that are nearly impossible to imagine happening at the same time, namely: Democrats win majorities in the House and Senate; a Democrat wins the White House; Senate Democrats end the filibuster; and and at least 218 House Democrats and 51 Senate Democrats support this policy. Because it is the biggest and most controversial reform proposal, however, expansion gets far more ink than non-structural reforms dealing with ethics and disclosures that are less \u201csexy\u201d but have a far greater chance of passage.<\/p>\n

So how to get past this partisan gridlock? Admittedly, reframing court reform as a nonpartisan issue won\u2019t be easy. But there are a few ways to do it.<\/p>\n

First off, let\u2019s look to the lower courts. When a district or circuit court judge does something unethical, Democrats and Republicans should join together in condemnation. That happened in the Judge Joshua Kindred context in 2024, where the District of Alaska judge was forced to resign over sexual harassment. Indeed, once Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) spoke out so forcefully against Kindred\u2019s actions, it wasn\u2019t a far leap for her to cosponsor a Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii)-led effort to improve anti-harassment and anti-retaliation protections for third-branch staff.<\/p>\n

Other successful and near-successful efforts in the lower courts have followed the same formula of bipartisan pairs. In 2021, Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) drafted legislation to bring lower court judges (and, thanks to Fix the Court, the justices, as well) under the STOCK Act, requiring their financial disclosures and stock transactions be posted online, which became law the following year.<\/p>\n

Bills to remove the paywall blocking public access to lower court filings (i.e., \u201cfree PACER\u2019\u201d) led by Sens. Kennedy and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Issa and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) have come close to passage; it is the same with legislation to add dozens of badly needly judgeships to overworked U.S. district courts led by Sens. Coons and Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Issa and Johnson. It should be the same for the Supreme Court, regardless of one\u2019s ideological priors.<\/p>\n

All of the above may be lower stakes than instituting term limits (though, again, there is nothing inherently partisan about that) or court expansion. But if we want lasting reform \u2013 emphasis on lasting<\/em> \u2013 we need to find solutions that have input from, and can benefit, both sides of the political equation. Neither side should have a monopoly \u2013 either in principle or practice \u2013 on Supreme Court reform.<\/p>\n

Read more Judge blocks Trump\u2019s second birthright citizenship order<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not\u00a0necessarily\u00a0reflect the opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff. Read more Judge temporarily halts Trump\u2019s latest birthright citizenship order In Jan. 2023, a PDF attachment appeared in my inbox: draft legislation requiring the Supreme Court to establish a code of conduct and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"yoast_head":"\nCourt reform is liberal-coded nowadays. 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