11.15.2023

A distinction without a difference

Supreme Court Adopts Ethics Code After Reports of Undisclosed Gifts and Travel

“For the most part these rules and principles are not new,” the court said, adding that “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.”

The headline has been in just about every paper by now, with slight changes (this one's from the NYTimes)…and the story's about the same too. Right down to mentioning, four or five graphs down, the code makes no mention of any kind of enforcement.

Of course these people…the people subject to this code…are jurors, aren't they, and one would like to believe the most distinguished jurors in the land. And one would just naturally expect them to be of high moral standard.

Wouldn't one?

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