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ThinkProgress

—via timekiller-s:

(D-CT) circulated a letter calling upon the House Judiciary Committee’s leadership to hold a hearing his bill ending the Supreme Court’s immunity to key judicial ethics laws. Murphy’s bill is inspired by numerous recent ethics scandals involving the Court’s most conservative members:

There have been alarming reports of justices – most notably Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – attending political events and using their position to fundraise for organizations. These activities would be prohibited if the justices were required to abide by the Judicial Conference Code of Conduct, which currently applies to all other federal judges. […]

Recent revelations about Justice Thomas accepting tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from individuals and organizations who often have an interest in matters before the courts calls into question the Court’s impartiality. Canon 4D of the Code of Conduct incorporates regulations providing that “[a] judicial officer or employee shall not accept a gift from anyone who is seeking official action from or doing business with the court.” Yet Justice Thomas received a gift valued at $15,000 from an organization that had a brief pending before his Court at the very moment they gave him the gift. Incidents such as these undermine the integrity of the entire judiciary, and they should not be allowed to continue.

Forty-three Members of Congress have now joined Murphy’s call to end the Supreme Court’s ethics immunity.

by Peter Hardin, GavelGrab

Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is targeting five Supreme Court justices with sharp criticism, and he is urging impeachment action.

Justice at Stake has consistently cautioned against impeachment calls based on disagreement with specific rulings. JAS Executive Director Bert Brandenburg warned in a statement last October:

“Almost every American, liberal and conservative, has been angered by particular legal rulings, but that’s because we ask courts to settle tough legal disputes. It is reckless to threaten judges with ouster simply because we don’t like a particular decision.”

Nader declares in a commentary distributed by OpEd News, “Five Supreme Court Justices–Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals.”

“Taken together,” he writes, “the decisions are brazenly over-riding sensible precedents, tearing apart the state common law of torts and blocking class actions, shoving aside jury verdicts, limiting people’s ‘standing to sue,’ pre-empting state jurisdictions–anything that serves to centralize power and hand it over to the corporate conquistadores.”

Nader concludes: “Never have I urged impeachment of Supreme Court justices. I do so now, for the sake of ending the Supreme Court’s corporate-judicial dictatorship that is not accountable under our system of checks and balance in any other way.”