In a report that reads like an installation of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, ProPublica recently reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury travel from Harlan Crow, a Texas real estate developer and prominent Republican donor, for more than two decades. One of the excursions was a holiday in 2019 in which Thomas and his wife spent nine days island hopping off the coast of Indonesia aboard a 50-meter yacht. Thomas did not list the trips on his annual financial disclosure forms.

On Monday, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to demand that he investigate how such conduct can occur in court under your supervision and take all necessary steps to prevent further misconduct. The senators also promised to hold a hearing on ethical standards at the court.

Neither Congress nor the public should have had to rely on investigative reporters to hear about the hospitality Crow Thomas extended to Thomas. Fortunately, Thomas and his colleagues must now comply with new disclosure obligations under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. Under guidelines issued in January by the Judicial Conference of the United States, judges and judges must disclose when traveling on private jets or staying at private resorts that operate commercially or are owned by a business entity rather than

than

to individuals or families.

Commenting on ProPublica’s report, Thomas said he intends to follow these new guidelines. But he seemed unconcerned about his behavior, noting that Crow and his wife were among Thomas and his wife’s closest friends.

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Virginia. As friends do, we’ve accompanied them on a number of family trips over the more than quarter-century we’ve known them, he added.

Still, Crow is very active in conservative political circles, including serving on the board of directors of the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank, and became friends only shortly after Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court. have known what it would look like to the average American taking luxury trips funded by Crow.

Thomas also vaguely referred to advice he had received from my colleagues and others in the judiciary that led him to the conclusion that this kind of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who had no court cases, could not be reported. That’s a puzzling comment considering that in 1997 Thomas reported on a trip on Crow’s personal plane to Northern California, where Thomas was Crow’s guest at the Bohemian Grove, which holds male-only retreats for government and business leaders .

While Thomas is more forthcoming with stricter disclosure standards by the Judicial Conference in the future, more needs to be done to ensure the credibility of the courts. Judges must be held to the same disclosure standards as members of Congress.

Fix the Court, a reform group, is proposing that judges should be required to file a report within 30 days of their return from a trip funded by others, listing the names of other guests and the dollar amounts for each mode of transportation, as well as as accommodation and meals. That seems reasonable. The group also has an intriguing proposal to create an ethics office for the court that would pre-approve sponsored travel for judges, even if a personal friend picked up the bill.

It is also vital that Supreme Court judges are bound by a code of conduct, as are lower court judges. So far, the court has not acted to enact such a code, despite a comment from Judge Elena Kagan in 2019 that Roberts was studying the question. If the court continues to hesitate, Congress must act.

Thomas is a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats not only because of questions about his behavior and his wife’s activities,

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involved in efforts to help Donald Trump reverse his 2020 election defeat, but also because of his conservative jurisprudence.

But judicial ethics should not be a partisan issue. All Supreme Court justices, regardless of their ideology or the president who appointed them, must be held to the highest ethical standards. And all judges should be aware of the problem of appearances that arise when they accept generous gifts from political actors, even if they are best friends.