Zack Smith
Judges aren’t politicians and shouldn’t behave like them. When they do, questions about their impartiality naturally arise. Consider two troubling recent cases where other judges unfairly echoed political attacks impugning the integrity of sitting Supreme Court justices. One case involved attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas, and the other involved attacks on Justice Samuel Alito.
The most recent incident occurred last month in Texas, when former Court of Appeals Justice Sarah Beth Landau, who at the time served as an active judge, posted on X a misleading article by the New Republic that implied Thomas engaged in unethical conduct.
In her own commentary appended to her post, she said, “This Supreme Court Justice is doing a disservice to the rest of the federal judiciary, who are bound by, and in my experience abide by, a code of ethics. Everyone looks bad when those at the top do this and refuse to do better. The bar is too low.”
Yet the December 2023 article she shared simply regurgitated innuendo from a ProPublica hit piece on Thomas published around that same time. Pro Publica has a less-than-stellar track record (to put it mildly) in reporting on Thomas and other conservative Supreme Court justices. As attorney Mark Paoletta and others have pointed out, these reports are full of innuendo suggesting some type of wrongdoing where none exists.
Supreme Court Shows Its Integrity With New Code of Ethics
As commentator Ramesh Ponnuru said about this piece in particular, ProPublica “crossed the line from hype to misleading the public.”
What does it say that a sitting judge approvingly posted an article relying on such a misleading (not to mention controversial) piece?
More troubling is Landau’s own misleading statement, in which she insinuates, if not outright states, both that Supreme Court justices are not bound by a code of ethics (they are) and that Thomas has violated that code (he hasn’t). » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/when-judges-act-politicians-they-deserve-be-criticized