Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth released this statement following Justice Kagan’s comments today, where she said she’d support Chief Justice Roberts creating “some sort of committee of highly respected judges with a great deal of experience and a reputation for fairness” to handle ethics enforcement (video will be posted here, likely on Friday):

“For any Supreme Court ethics framework to have any teeth, someone must hold the justices to it, and for what should be obvious reasons, it can’t be the justices themselves.

“So it makes sense that Justice Kagan would endorse a solution whereby lower court judges — I’d like to include retired justices, as well — play the role of ethics enforcers. After all, lower court judges play that very role under the Ethics in Government Act, with the Judicial Conference and not the high court possessing the power to refer a justice who violates the disclosure law to the Justice Department.

“Do Kagan’s comments mean she’d grant a ‘committee of highly respected judges’ the power to compel a justice to recuse from a case or refile a disclosure? That remains to be seen, and I believe any constitutional questions can be worked out.

“But given that it was Justice Kagan who talked about the need for a SCOTUS ethics code well before her peers, her vision on the topic should not be dismissed.”

Additional information:
Currently, only the justice who is the very subject to a recusal motion decides whether or not to step aside from a case or petition.

No justice as far as we can tell has ever been referred to the Justice Department for violations of the disclosure requirements of the Ethics in Government Act.

There remains no way to even lodge a complaint against a justice, though it’s been tried over the last few years.

Several SCOTUS ethics bills with enforcement mechanisms have been introduced in this Congress, and they are listed here.