Americans deserve a government dedicated to America’s best interests, not the highest bidder. And yet, Sen. Bob Menedez, D-N.J., is on trial for giving billions of your money to Egypt in exchange for gold bars and fancy cars.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, has also been indicted on charges of accepting bribes — more than half a million dollars worth — to benefit a Mexican bank.
But when it comes to ethics reform, we’re not supposed to care about that. We’re asked to focus on Justice Samuel Alito. Alito’s wife hung an American flag upside down three years ago, and the couple put up a Revolutionary War flag last year. Democrats argue Alito cannot assess the breadth of “obstruction” in 18 U.S.C. §1512(c), the statute used to charge Jan. 6 defendants. Apparently, these flags were carried in the Capitol that day, alongside a maze of other flags.
The timing is not random. Though the flag was publicly displayed years ago, the outrage campaign takes place now, on the eve of the Supreme Court releasing major decisions.
That exposes the purpose: the laser focus on Alito (and, often, Justice Clarence Thomas) has nothing to do with ethics. It is designed to diminish the court’s credibility.
None of the Democrats calling for ethics reform care about it close to home, i.e., among Democratic officials or liberal judges. In addition to the Democratic officials I started with, Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not recuse herself from a case involving a book publisher that paid her $3.6 million. The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud case, which had massive political implications, donated to his opponent, President Joe Biden. Crickets.
Moreover, the behavior that arguably calls for recusal is head-scratching. A flag? That’s like saying a judge with Ohio State yard decor couldn’t decide a case involving a carjacker whose accomplices wore Ohio State polos. Even the most active imagination struggles to identify any conflict.
Other qualms are similarly bizarre. Democrats say that because Alito has been (publicly) interviewed by Wall Street Journal writers about his judicial philosophy, Alito should recuse himself from an entirely unrelated tax case in which one writer (publicly) signed a brief. No one is hiding because there’s nothing to hide.
The alarmist Democrats’ concerns are not with flags or interviews. They are with Alito and Thomas.
These justices read the Constitution and laws for what they are rather than blindly favoring a lawless executive or specific policy outcomes. Instead of debating that method of constitutional interpretation, Democrats have demanded Supreme Court “ethics reform” as a euphemism to give politicians power over the court.
Those politicians would use their power to pressure certain justices to remove themselves in hot-topic cases. That’s majoritarian tyranny, not the constitutional republic we signed up for. Worse still, endless investigations and accusations would destroy confidence in the rule of law by bombarding Americans with everything but legal reasoning.
And that’s really what matters. Are decisions well-reasoned?
Instead of clamoring for ways to insert politics into the judiciary by dissolving the Supreme Court’s independence, the American public should spend more time reading opinions.
This approach would create a more informed public and give us tools for reasoned, passionate civic discourse. Through reading opinions, we would understand why justices arrived at a certain result and what to do about it. Regarding originalists like Alito and Thomas, the path to new policies always lies through the democratic process.
By respecting the separation of powers and educating ourselves about what cases we “don’t like” actually say, we would form a healthier democracy instead of fueling today’s silly blind rage against yard decor.
May Mailman is the director of the Independent Women’s Law Center and a former legal adviser to President Donald Trump.
