Undisclosed gifts from a billionaire won’t even embarrass the right.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
One of the oddest features of the American constitutional order is that it cedes the greatest level of power to the branch of government with the weakest ethical constraints. The judicial branch can, by majority vote, override any law passed by the other two branches, even those requiring supermajority support. Yet the justices of the Supreme Court, whose authority is total, do not even need to follow the ethical rules imposed on lower-ranking judges.
Thomas did not disclose any of these gifts, a failure that “appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress, and federal officials to disclose most gifts,” two ethics-law experts tell ProPublica. But the important thing to understand is that there is no enforcement mechanism at all for these ethical norms. They are essentially a suggestion.
Thomas made these statements in a documentary financed in part by Crow, the very man who flies him around the world to exclusive resorts and other luxury venues. This statement also reveals that Thomas’s public statements that are meant as signals about his integrity and potential for corruption can’t be taken at face value.
Thomas’s deepest conflicts involve his wife, Ginni, a powerful conservative activist whose network on the right is too extensive to even be summarized. Justice Thomas once said publicly of Ginni, “We are equally yoked, and we love being with each other because we love the same things. We believe in the same things.” Ginni now says the two operate in different lanes, but when a justice’s spouse works in politics, it is not even possible to construct a firewall between their work.
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