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.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.