"New revelations about a U.S. Supreme Court justice’s undisclosed free trip to Alaska have apparently prompted Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin to announce that his panel will mark up ethics legislation for the high court next month.
Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, tweeted Wednesday that the Supreme Court “is in an ethical crisis of its own making due to the acceptance of lavish gifts from parties with business before the court that several justices have not disclosed.”
Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island joined Durbin in the statement, report Politico and the Hill.
Currently, trial-level and appeals judges in the federal judiciary are bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. But the code does not bind Supreme Court justices.
In February, the ABA House of Delegates called on the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics for its justices that is similar to the code for other federal judges.
The markup announcement by Durbin and Whitehouse followed a ProPublica report that said Justice Samuel Alito took a free vacation to an Alaska fishing lodge in 2008, thanks to the generosity of hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and mortgage company entrepreneur Robin Arkley II. Singer flew Alito to the fishing lodge on his private jet, and Arkley, who owned the lodge, provided the accommodations.
Alito later ruled for Singer’s hedge fund in a case that helped the fund recover $2.4 billion. Alito said he was unaware that Singer had a link to that case and others that came before the Supreme Court in petitions for or against certiorari.”
This article was originally posted in the The ABA Journal
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