Supreme Court justices should be covered by a written code of conduct and should publicly disclose their own finances and those instances when they recuse themselves from cases.
That was the general view of several expert witnesses at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Friday.
"Our courts must be fair and impartial," said Democrat Hank Johnson of Georgia, who chaired the meeting of the panel that oversees the federal court system. "But also, our courts must appear to be fair and impartial."
Johnson has introduced legislation that would require the Judicial Conference of the United States to write a code for the Supreme Court. Judges on the federal trial courts and appeals courts are covered by written rules for ethical behavior, but the justices have long resisted adopting one for themselves. They say it would be unnecessary, and unconstitutional if imposed on them by Congress.
The Johnson bill has 51 co-sponsors, all Democrats. Similar language, however, was included in HR 1, the comprehensive government reform bill House Democrats passed along party lines this spring. But HR 1 has no future in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Johnson, the other Democrats on his panel and the witnesses he called agreed that greater ethical transparency is needed to boost the reputation of the court.
The most recent Gallup poll on public attitudes toward the Supreme Court found 51 percent approval and 40 percent disapproval. That was in September 2018, just as the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were calling the moral standing of the justices and their commitment to nonpartisanship into question. But the approval ratings were not much different from surveys in the previous decade.
Chief Justice John Roberts has said a code for the court is unnecessary because the justices already consult a variety of sources when considering the ethical concerns related to cases. The other argument is that having the legislative branch impose rules on the judiciary would violate the Constitution's separation of powers.
But professor Amanda Frost of American University, an expert on judicial ethics, testified in favor of a mandated code because the conduct of several justices has clearly violated the standards for other federal judges. She noted that the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas both spoke at fundraisers for the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been openly critical of President Donald Trump.
Gabe Roth, executive director of the advocacy group Fix the Court, testified that the government should publish online the financial disclosure forms that justices are required to fill out, instead of his group having to obtain them and publish them on its website.
One lawmaker raising concerns was Republican Martha Roby of Alabama, who said the additional transparency being proposed might put justices in physical danger. She cited the 1989 assassination in Alabama of a veteran federal appeals court judge, Robert Smith Vance, killed when he opened a mail bomb at his home.
"These security concerns are not hypothetical," Roby said.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.