Judicial Ethics in a Populist Age

The contemporary ethical standards that many Americans want to see the Supreme Court adhere to are exactly that—contemporary. Throughout the Court’s long history, justices have had conflicts of interest that we would find unacceptable today. And in the past, people didn’t seem to mind quite so much.

In 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the Court’s landmark opinion in , himself by contemporary standards. The case concerned the validity of judicial commissions that he had himself signed and sealed, and that his brother James Marshall had been charged with delivering. But Chief Justice Marshall didn’t recuse himself—and . In 1972, Chief Justice Warren Burger with President Richard Nixon about cases and issues that were or could come before the Court, including school busing and obscenity. The news in 1981, while