Over the past two decades, the United States Supreme Court has gone from being one of the most respected institutions in the country to becoming one of the most disreputable. It is not uncommon, especially from one year to this part.
Since June 2022, the nine magistrates of the High Court and especially the six that make up its comfortable conservative majority have not only issued regressive resolutions and contrary to the feelings of the majority on issues such as the right to abortion, the control of weapons or the fight against climate change; more than one has also been involved in a scandal that calls into question the ethics of their actions.
Last November, an investigation by The New York Times brought to light the more than fluid relations of friendship and possible confidentiality between certain Supreme Court judges, particularly Samuel Alito, and powerful lobbyists from the religious right; influential group leaders who in every case contributed to the Court Historical Society with generous tax-deductible donations. Some of the indicated magistrates denied any irregularity and the majority did not take the allusion.
Now the scandal is bigger. This is Judge Clarence Thomas. As the local media have been profusely reporting for weeks, the magistrate received and did not declare onerous gifts from Republican superdonor tycoon Harlan Crow in the form of luxury trips and real estate purchases.
Thomas accepted invitations from Crow to those trips practically every year for more than twenty, according to the agency Propública, specialized in investigative journalism. The judge, sometimes with his wife, Ginni Thomas, “vacated Crow’s superyacht around the world, flew his Bombardier Global 5000 jet, frequently visited his exclusive California men’s retreat, the Bohemian Grove, and he spent a week each summer on his sprawling ranch in East Texas.â€
In June 2019, the Thomases boarded a large private jet bound for Indonesia for a nine-day island-hopping tour attended by a group of assistants and a private chef. The trip was valued at more than half a million dollars.
Long before, in 2014, a Crow-linked real estate company bought Thomas and his family, for $133,363, a single-family home and two vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia. The magistrate’s mother, a nonagenarian, lived there. After the sale, the contractors made a series of improvements to the property worth tens of thousands of dollars. The judge’s mother continued to live there until at least 2020.
Crow argued that the purchase, he said at market value, was part of his “commitment to historic preservation and American education.” Speaking to the Times, he added that his intention was to turn Thomas’s home “someday” into a public museum dedicated to telling “the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice, who grew up in Savannah.”
The Democrats are not clear about the donor’s explanations, much less the fact that Thomas did not declare, as he is supposed to do according to the ethical laws established for the country’s high officials, the gifts and benefits he obtained from him. For this reason, the president of the Senate judicial committee, the Democrat Dick Durbin, has just urged the president of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, to testify on May 2 to address an “ethical reform of the court.” The invitation comes after Durbin asked Roberts to investigate Thomas’s ties to his friend and generous conservative donor.
The head of the highest US judicial institution had not yet responded yesterday to the Senate’s request to appear. In any case, the consequences of possible testimony and possible inquiries, beyond those carried out by the media, may be very limited.
The US Supreme Court magistrates are so for life, unless they resign or Congress agrees to their dismissal due to impeachment or impeachment, which would be practically unfeasible with the current composition of the Chambers.
Ten years ago, 50% of Americans said they had “a lot of confidence” in the Supreme Court, according to the Gallup Institute’s annual polls on the institution. Last year, only 25% gave that answer.
