Africa-Press – Mauritius. Thomas goes on cruises in far-flung locales on Crow’s yacht, flies on Crow’s private jet and keeps company with Crow’s friends and associates at Crow’s private resort. Justice Thomas has failed to disclose most of these indulgences, gifts if you will. Such disclosure is required.
Indeed, Justice Thomas has accepted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items such as a Bible owned by the 19th century author and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass, a bust of President Lincoln, and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative’s education expenses.
A federal law, known as the Ethics in Government Act of 1989, prohibits all federal employees, including the justices, from accepting anything of value from a person with official business before them.
Under rules adopted by the Judicial Conference to implement the law, judges are allowed to accept gifts of unlimited value from people without official business before the court.
In what is clearly an attempt to find a loophole for not reporting these gifts, Thomas said he was advised he didn’t have to disclose private jet flights and luxury vacations paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow because, although a close friend, Crow “did not have business before the court.
” Thomas did not disclose who gave him the advice and his statement that Crow did not have business before the Supreme Court is untrue.
Bloomberg reports that in 2005, the court declined to hear an appeal from an architecture firm that wanted more than $25 million from Trammell Crow Residential Co for allegedly misusing copyrighted building designs. The court’s order does not state that Thomas recused himself. On its face, Thomas’s actions appear to violate the federal law.
Justice Neal Gorsuch’s property purchased by law firm head: Justice Neal Gorsuch had listed for sale a 40-acre property he co-owned in Colorado for nearly two years before the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, a large US law firm agreed to acquire it nine days after Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court was confirmed by the Senate.
The sale closed a month later for $1.825 million. Although Gorsuch included his share of the proceeds on his disclosure form, he did not disclose the identity of the purchaser.
The box for that information was left blank. The law firm has had multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Of 12 cases in which Gorsuch participated, he sided with the law firm’s position 8 times and against the firm 4 times.
Chief Justice Roberts’ wife earned “commissions”: Chief Justice Roberts’ wife Jane Roberts earned $10 million over an 8-year stretch as a recruiter placing lawyers with firms.
The law firms had business before the Supreme Court. In an alleged whistleblower complaint, a former colleague of Jane Roberts alleged that she earned “commissions” because of her husband’s position and that the Chief Justice had improperly reported his wife’s earnings as “income” rather than “commissions” from law firms.
The earnings were paid by Jane Roberts’ employer, not directly by the law firms. The whistleblower’s charges were dismissed by an arbitrator as being meritless.
Code of conduct for Justices
The Supreme Court has no formal code of ethics applicable to its Justices. However, that is not to say there are no standards of conduct for the Justices.
In 1922, Congress created the Judicial Conference of the United States to manage the lower federal courts. The Judicial Conference, which binds lower courts, does not supervise the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless in 1991, Members of the Court voluntarily adopted a resolution to follow the substance of the Judicial Conference Regulations. These requirements include filing disclosure forms.
Note that the Ethics in Government Act of 1989 has a prohibition on Justices accepting gifts—anything of value—from persons having business before the Supreme Court.
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