Chairman Johnson's Opening Remarks Hearing on: “Building Confidence in the Supreme Court Through Ethics and Recusal Reforms”

2141 Rayburn House Office Building

Good afternoon and welcome. We are here today to consider a question that goes to the heart of our democracy: Should the United States Supreme Court, the highest court in our nation and one of the most powerful judicial bodies in the world, abide by a uniform and binding set of ethics rules?

Ours has been described as a government of laws and not of men, and nowhere is that principle more essential than in the fair and evenhanded administration of justice. This house is built on the rule of law; its foundation is fairness, transparency, and accountability.

But the lack of enforceable ethical standards for judicial officers is a crack in that foundation. It is a flaw that was first recognized nearly 50 years ago, when the judges of the lower federal courts wrote and adopted an ethics code to bind themselves to better conduct. That code does not apply to the Supreme Court. The justices were unpersuaded by the actions of their judicial peers and did not see the need to act then. They refuse to act now.

The result is sadly predictable: A steady stream of revelations that justices have approached the line of acceptable behavior, are in an ethical gray area, or, seemingly more and more often, have crossed the line entirely. The propensity to transgress is not limited to the justices appointed by presidents of one political party. And I'm afraid it is not a coincidence that recent polling has shown a marked decline in public confidence in the Supreme Court.

Other events have made it disturbingly clear that without explicit enforceable rules, certain members of the high court are going to keep trying to get away with more and more until they have gotten away with our whole republic. I'm alarmed, for example, about unanswered questions about Justice Thomas's failure to recuse from a decision that we now know might have implicated the actions of his wife in her apparent efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This problem is much bigger than Clarence Thomas, but his is a case-in-point for why enacting enforceable ethics rules is long past-due.

Today we explore how to fix that crack in our foundation. If the justices of the Supreme Court will not act to safeguard their constitutional responsibilities as impartial judicial officers, then it is up to this body. It is Congress's responsibility to make laws governing the federal courts—which includes the Supreme Court—and there are several bills that would bring much-needed improvements to the ethics and recusal practices at the Supreme Court. These include two bills I have been proud to lead in the House—the Supreme Court Ethics Act and the Twenty-First Century Courts Act of 2022.

Any meaningful ethics reform must include meaningful recusal reform. They go hand-in-hand and are crucial to ensuring that the decisions made by unelected officers, who serve for life, and who have the power to say what the law is, are made fairly and without respect to persons or profits.

That brings us to our hearing today and our distinguished panelists. I thank you in advance for your expertise and for the time you have devoted to these subjects and to this hearing, and I look forward to your testimony.
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