Grassroots supporters encouraged to weigh in on cameras in the courtroom, term limits, blind trusts and other proposals for transparency and accountability

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Fix the Court is marking its one-year anniversary by launching a new website at FixTheCourt.com aimed at encouraging supporters to take various actions to push its reform proposals forward – with an eye toward next year’s presidential election.

Each of the six reform proposals – ending the court’s broadcast media ban, ending life tenure for the justices, requiring stronger ethics rules, requiring blind trusts and recusal explanations, giving public notice of the justices’ out-of-court appearances and standardizing the justices’ financial disclosures – now has an action associated with it, from writing a letter to a member of Congress (on cameras) or the Judicial Conference (on financial disclosures) to signing a petition directed to the justices themselves (on blind trusts).

In the coming months Fix the Court will evaluate which activities have gained the most traction with supporters and work towards convincing members of both parties to endorse these proposals in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

“In the year since Fix the Court started, we’ve exposed the justices’ conflicts of interest and dubious stock transactions and raised awareness about their antiquated policies on broadcast media and length of tenure,” Fix the Court executive director Gabe Roth said. “We’ve posted financial information about the justices online that they probably didn’t want you to see, and we’ve stood with elected officials – from both parties – who are interested in opening up the court and ensuring it follows the same rules as other high-level government institutions.”

“Now as the national focus moves toward the presidential election, we will work with our grassroots network to determine which reforms our supporters believe are most pressing – and then encourage the campaigns to endorse those reforms by next November,” Roth said.

Fix the Court will start by targeting the more than 100,000 people it has brought together via social media and e-mail signups, directing them to the Action Center, where individuals may choose which reform or reforms they feel are most urgent – and for which they want to complete a discrete action.

The organization will also encourage those who take action to share information with their friends via social media and will run ads on Facebook and Twitter to motivate a larger audience to push the high court towards reform.

“Fix the Court was not created to tear down an institution or nine individuals,” Roth added. “We believe that, if implemented, the fixes we advocate for would instead build the court back up in a way that would restore faith in what has become our most powerful, least accountable branch of government.”