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- Justice Samuel Alito recently blasted proposed SCOTUS ethics roles in an interview with WSJ.
- Senate Democrats say he violated the court's ethics rules by doing that.
- And they're demanding that he recuse himself from future cases involving the article's author.
Several Democratic senators on Thursday accused conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of violating the court's ethics guidelines, They're also demanding he recuse himself from certain future cases before the court.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts that Alito violated the court's Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices by publicly opining on the constitutionality of a Democratic-led bill to impose a formal code of conduct on the court in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
"I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it," Alito said in the interview. "No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period."
Those comments, the senators allege, create the "appearance of impropriety in the minds of reasonable members of the public," thus violating the Statement on Ethics.
The letter was signed by 10 Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee — all of them, except for Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
The senators also argue that Alito must now recuse himself from any cases involving a co-author of the Wall Street Journal — attorney David Rivkin — because Rivkin "access to Justice Alito and efforts to help Justice Alito air his personal grievances could cast doubt on Justice Alito's ability to fairly discharge his duties" in any case involving Rivkin.
Rivkin, the senators note, is representing one of the parties in a tax case currently pending before the court, Moore v. United States. And he could conceivably represent other clients before the court in the future.
Both Rivkin and a spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.