The U.S. Supreme Court and Ethics Reform

This summer, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would attempt to set ethics rules for the U.S. Supreme Court and a process to enforce them, including rules for transparency around recusals, gifts, and conflicts of interest. The bill, which still requires full Senate approval, is the latest in a series of proposals and attempts to reform or improve the Supreme Court in recent years. In this episode of We the People, we discuss various proposals to reform ethics rules surrounding the Supreme Court; how and whether these proposals could go into effect; and what the enforcement mechanisms could be. Law professors Daniel Hemel of NYU Law and Daniel Epps of Washington University School of Law join host Jeffrey Rosen.  

Resources: 

• S.359 - Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 (Sen. Whitehouse) 
• S.325 - Supreme Court Ethics Act (Sen. Murphy) 
• Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman, “The Future of Supreme Court Reform” (2021) 
• Daniel Hemel, “Can Structural Changes Fix the Supreme Court?” (2021) 

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