Courts

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Justice Samuel Alito Over Self-Serving Wall Street Journal Interview

Don't expect anything to be done about it.

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Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito And Elena Kagan Testify Before The House Appropriations Committee

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Back in July, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal. The backdrop to the interview was months of swirling ethics concerns as journalists began to dig into the justices’ finances and discovered billionaire friends, undisclosed real estate deals, luxury trips, and so much more. With questions about the appearance of impropriety arising, and Chief Justice John Roberts abdicating responsibility, members of Congress began to think about what their branch of government can do to stop the free-falling trust in the Court.

But Alito was not having any of that, and said in the WSJ interview a wildly wrong and self-serving take that, “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” Even Alito’s fellow justices couldn’t keep a straight face about that one.

Now Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight and a frequent critic of the Court’s lack of disclosures — filed an ethics complaint with the Chief Justice about Alito’s behavior. Whitehouse starts out by noting that sending a letter to the Chief lodging an ethics complaint isn’t standard procedure because there isn’t one. He write that “unlike every other federal court, the Supreme Court has no formal process for receiving or investigating such complaints,” and urges “the Supreme Court to adopt a uniform process to address this complaint and others that may arise against any justice in the future.”

Whitehouse notes that he’s working on passing an ethical code for the High Court, and Alito bashing the concept of one is commenting on a legal issue that could come before the Court. A no-no, you know if there were an ethics code SCOTUS was bound to. “Making public comments assessing the merits of a legal issue that could come before the Court undoubtedly creates the very appearance of impropriety these [ethics] rules are meant to protect against,” Whitehouse wrote in the letter.

Also raising the ethical alarm bell for Whitehouse is one of the interviewers in that WSJ piece. BakerHostetler attorney David B. Rivkin Jr. and Wall Street Journal editorial features editor James Taranto were the ones who conducted the interview. But Rivkin is an attorney for the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo… who just happens to be in receipt of a request by the Senate Judiciary Committee for details regarding a luxury fishing trip he took with Alito.

“The timing of Justice Alito’s opining suggests that he intervened to give his friend and political ally support in his effort to block congressional inquiries,” Whitehouse said.

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But since undisclosed trips Alito took are a part of the Committee’s probe, opining on whether another branch of government can investigate the ethics of the Court is something Alito himself also benefits from, “At the end, Justice Alito is the beneficiary of his own improper opining. This implicates Canon 2(B) strictures against improperly using one’s office to further a personal interest: a justice obstructing a congressional investigation that implicates his own conduct.”

Roberts has not responded to the complaint, and given the Chief’s history of wishing away Court ethics concerns, I wouldn’t expect anything else.

Read the full letter below.

whitehouse letter to roberts

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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