Why do some United States Supreme Court justices have such a hard time saying no?

Believe me, I understand the temptation. Columnists may not be judges in the traditional sense, but we are

Are

judges in the court of public opinion. Occasionally I have been offered gifts in exchange for a positive verdict (well,

a positive

column) on a controversial issue that may be ahead of me.

As attractive as these offers are, they’re just not that hard to turn down. Especially if the credibility of the institution or your job is at stake.

The people who serve judges and journalists expect and deserve transparency, honesty and independence. They don’t want either group to be bought off or materially rewarded for the

opinions they express. As the

audience stops believing

T

If the courts or the news media act on principle, the institutions lose credibility. Even the smell of a conflict of interest or a quid pro quo diminishes them. Secretly accepting costly gifts from interested parties and then acting as if it were nobody’s business is one of the quickest ways to erode trust in our democratic infrastructure, our free press, our supposedly fair and impartial Supreme Court.

It’s amazing that newspapers like The Times are stricter on ethics than the Supreme Court, which has to report certain financial transactions each year but otherwise has no mandatory code of ethics at all.

No one has ever offered me a free flight in a private jet to a rustic lodge in Alaska, as in the case of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. of the Supreme Court, or a free seat on a private jet to a superyacht in Indonesia, as in the case of Judge Clarence Thomas. But I’ve been offered a lot of nice things in my career.

When I was a cub reporter in Ventura County, the owner of an oceanfront vacation home in Oxnard Shores offered me the use of his home. the catch? I was working on a story about a proposed moratorium on beachfront housing, which he opposed. If he liked the story, he told me, I was welcome for a weekend at the beach. The invitation was answered after publication.

Even if a source doesn’t want anything, if they just appreciate something you’ve written, they’re allowed to

attempt

to thank you with a rich gift. That creates the appearance of impropriety. I’ve returned a Seiko watch, a gold bracelet, a Blackberry (remember?) and designer clothes over the years.

I once wrote about the late Ray Evans, the lyricist helped by the extremely talented songwriting duo

,

Livingston and Evans. I thought an origin story of the great Christmas carol Silver Bells would be a

Good

read while on vacation, so I arranged to meet Evans for an interview over lunch, and when I dropped him off at his home in Benedict Canyon, he invited me in.

Evans, an 89-year-old widower with a mischievous streak, invited me downstairs to his bedroom to show me his royalty books. Are you sure your husband doesn’t mind? he joked, as he settled into his motorized stair chair for the descent.

In a notebook on his desk he kept track of how much money he had made from that one classic song, more than half a million dollars a year.

The story ran on December 1. 25, 2004. That morning my house phone rang. It was Evans, delighted with the piece. I couldn’t have paid a publicist to get such a great story in the paper, he exclaimed. I want you to go to Tiffany’s and pick out everything you want. If I want

This week I was offered a stay in a beautiful small hotel by the sea in Laguna

beach

in exchange for covering the place. That’s a newspaper no-no. Would the story be colored by the fact that my stay would not have cost a penny?

How can it not be? a

and why should anyone even wonder?

Which brings me back to the Supreme Court, which is not bound by the code of conduct that applies to all other federal judges.

If we are ever to regain confidence in the Supreme Court, Congress must pass a specific and binding code of ethics for the justices, which imposes well-defined dollar limits on gifts and personal hospitality, the evasion Thomas specifically allowed, to conduct at the freebie trough.

The nation’s highest court should not have the lowest ethical standards, said Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announcing

that his committee would consider legislation that tightens ethical rules before the Supreme Court later this summer.

It’s not just conservative judges who haven’t publicized their conflicts. According to reports, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has not backed down in at least three cases involving Penguin Random House, which paid her millions of dollars for her memoirs and children’s books.

The idea that the judges can be trusted to monitor themselves, as all nine recently stated in a joint statement on ethics, is laughable. Nobody can. Humans are endlessly creative in resolving conflicts on their own. For example, Alito claimed that it was okay for him to take a free private jet ride to Alaska because the seat would have been free anyway.

Either way, the Supreme Court justices shouldn’t be responsible for deciding what freebies to accept or what cases to back down from.

Let’s take that terrible burden off their black-clad shoulders. Like journalists, they need hard and fast rules to abide by.

@robinkabcarian