One-third of the United States Supreme Court attends Federalist Society fund raiser

As reported by Common Cause and Bob Edgar:

[T]hree members of our Supreme Court were guests last Thursday at an annual fundraising dinner sponsored by the Federalist Society, a self-styled association of conservative and libertarian lawyers that is providing much of the intellectual firepower behind efforts to overturn the landmark health care reform law passed last year.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were honorees and speakers at the black tie event and Justice Samuel Alito, a regular at Federalist Society gatherings, was in the audience, according to a program prepared for the dinner.

Edgar anticipates the question of whether this activity is ethically acceptable. The quick answer is that justices on the United States Supreme Court are not subject to any code of ethics:

[This activity] clearly violates the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges, a set of ethical standards the Supreme Court helps enforce on lower federal courts but has refused to impose on itself.

Share

Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Avatar of Tim Hogan
    Tim Hogan

    Rachel Maddow reported last might an even more disturbing fact: the entire dinner was sponsored by and the awards for Scalia and Thomas given by the law firm that will be arguing against the constitutionality of the new healthcare law a/k/a by the righties as “Obamacare.”

    We need to impeach Thomas, Roberts, Scalia and Alito, now.

    1. Avatar of Jim Razinha
      Jim Razinha

      That deserves a “Wow”, too.

Leave a Reply