AP Photo/Morry Gash
- Amy Coney Barrett on Monday endorsed the idea for a formal ethics code for the Supreme Court.
- Barrett made the revelation during a discussion at the University of Minnesota Law School.
- Some have called for rules following reports of previously undisclosed trips taken by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Monday said that it would be a "good idea" for the US Supreme Court to establish a formal code of conduct governing the body, a revelation that comes as many have called for oversight of the high court after a series of ethical controversies in recent months.
Barrett, a conservative former federal appeals court judge who has served on the Supreme Court since October 2020, told an audience at the University of Minnesota Law School that instituting an ethics code would allow the justices to offer the public greater transparency.
"It would be a good idea for us to do it, particularly so that we can communicate to the public exactly what it is that we're doing in a clearer way than perhaps we have been able to do so far," she said.
Barrett told the audience that she continues to follow the same rules as she did when she served on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. And she also pushed back against any idea that the justices differed on the necessity of creating an ethics code.
"There is no lack of consensus among the justices," she said. "There's unanimity among all nine justices that we should and do hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards possible."
"I think what we are thinking about in a code of conduct is how best to express what we are already doing," she continued. "We all file our financial disclosure forms — for example — and gift regulations, which are statutory requirements."
But when the host, former Minnesota Law Dean and professor Robert Stein, asked Barrett about a timeline for when the high court might institute an ethics code, she said she wasn't able to offer any specifics.
"I think that's something that I can't really speak for the court about or make any sort of guess," she replied.
Several protestors interrupted the discussion early on, chanting: "Not the court. Not the state. People must decide their fate" and "Reproductive rights are under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"
Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court three years ago, cementing a 6-3 conservative bloc.
Last year, the court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, in a highly polarizing decision that upended nearly 50 years of federal abortion policy in the US.
The push for increased ethics rules for the high court has grown louder this year following detailed reports of the activities of several justices off the bench.
In April, ProPublica published a bombshell report that detailed how Justice Clarence Thomas had taken luxury vacations funded by the billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow for more than 20 years without disclosing the trips.
Thomas, in a response to revelations about the previously undisclosed trips, said at the time that he was advised that it wasn't necessary to report "this sort of personal hospitality."
And Justice Samuel Alito received criticism after ProPublica reported that he had taken a luxury fishing trip in 2008 with the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and failed to list it on his financial disclosures for that year. In later years, Singer's businesses were parties to several cases before the court, and Alito did not recuse himself in those instances.
In an extraordinary move for a Supreme Court justice, Alito in June took to The Wall Street Journal opinion pages, arguing that he had "no obligation to recuse" himself from the cases cited by the publication, while also stating that he was not required to report the fishing trip.