Justice Samuel Alito insists that Congress has no power to ‘regulate’ the Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has been at the center of a series of ethics controversies on the court recently, told the Wall Street Journal that lawmakers should give up on the idea of ​​imposing new rules on judges.

“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period,” he said. he told a couple of interviewers from the Opinion section of the commercial newspaper in a piece that appeared Friday.

Alito, author of the opinion in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade, has been unusually active for a sitting federal judge in defending claims of impropriety.

He went so far as to have the Journal publish an op-ed he wrote to defend himself against claims in a ProPublica story that he had failed to reveal a free luxury trip and private jet travel — before ProPublica had published the story.

In the interview published Friday, Alito said that normally “the organized bar” of lawyers would defend the court against its critics. But he said that hasn’t been happening: “And, at a certain point, I said to myself, no one else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

There has been a lot to defend lately, as Alito and Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas have been accused of failing to properly report gifts on federal disclosure forms. Thomas, in particular, was ProPublica reported that it has accepted trips of Republican megadonor Harlan Crow for years.

The ethics disputes led Senate Democrats to consider requiring the Court to hold itself to stricter ethical standards, closer to those found in the legislative and executive branches of government.

On July 20, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (DR.I.) that would require the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct and create a process to investigate potential violations.

Chief Justice John Roberts has said such changes are not necessary and the court could be trusted to self-regulate. But Alito’s comments appear to go much further, saying that Congress cannot impose any requirements on the Supreme Court because it is part of an equal branch of government created by the US Constitution.

Congress already controls a large aspect of the Supreme Court by setting how much it can spend annually, and the Constitution also notes that its jurisdiction as a court of appeals is subject to “such regulations as Congress may make.”

White House, in a social media postsaid one of the two interviewers, who wrote that they sat down with Alito for a total of four hours over two sessions that ended in early July, is part of an effort to block an investigation into Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the Libertarian Federalist Society which has been influential in the choice of Republican nominees for the courts.

News site TPM said attorney David Rivkin writes regularly for Opinion, but is also part of a team with law firm BakerHostetler LLP that has a big tax case to be brought to court that could decide whether a wealth tax would be constitutional.

Whitehouse posted: “Shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured Court – the same people keep showing up with new hats.”