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Alito ‘stunningly wrong’ that Senate can’t impose supreme court ethics rules
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Yes but Congress "checks" SCOTUS by nominating and approving (Senate only) justices, allocating resources for the appellate courts and impeaching justices. Not by regulating their moral character.
An ethics process similar to the ethics process in the House and Senate would not be something Congress could implement without a Constitutional Amendments. In theory SCOTUS could implement it upon themselves (although they lack the power to remove/censure their fellow justices like the House and Senate can do), but they could only request Congress impeach someone who failed the ethics review.
Reread Article 3, please. Congress structures the Courts, and justices hold their positions during "good behavior". Doesn't it follow that Congress can establish what "good behavior" means?
If they aren't physically accountable to anyone then they might as well be the unelected Junta of the United States. Someone has to determine what good behavior actually is, and if it's them themselves then that flies in the face of the entire interdependent system of government we have.
If you go by the strict interpretation of the constitution, the SC isn't even the highest court. It's only the interstate court. They appointed themselves the highest court in a case.
"The court's power and prestige grew substantially during the Marshall Court (1801–1835).[17] Under Marshall, the court established the power of judicial review over acts of Congress,[18] including specifying itself as the supreme expositor of the Constitution (Marbury v. Madison)[19][20] "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
So they basically said "I'm in charge because I said so". That's precarious at best, and it would just take Congress to say "no you're not" for it to fall apart.
I really think this is something that could be argued. You seem to be arguing for a strict interpretation of the constitution rather than a lot of ones we see today that have changed repeatedly and/or made more modern interpretations. A strict interpretation would also mean that the supreme court doesn't have the power to decide if laws are constitutional or not as that's not specifically in the constitution nor granted with an amendment.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-3/
Congress shouldn't be able to implement arbitrary rules on the Judicial branch any more than the Executive branch should. Internally, SCOTUS already has self-imposed ethics rules that are suppose to be followed; similar to the ethics rules in Congress passed for itself.
What do you think judicial power is? The power to hold dinner parties it's? It's literally the power to interpret the law. Its not written because everyone with half a brain can understand that.
Then maybe a super strict “as written” interpretation of the constitution is dumb.
Except that is an "as written" interpretation because it would take intentionally misunderstand to not understand what judicial powers entail. You aren't making a point against anything, just being dumb.