Regarding Harlan Crow and SCOTUS

Texas billionaire Harlan Crow seldom misses an opportunity to do favors for his “dear friend” Clarence Thomas. So it was hardly surprising when he declined an invitation from the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide the details of his decades-long financial entanglement with the Supreme Court justice and his wife.

Crow no doubt believed he was helping the Thomases by rejecting the committee’s request, but it turns out that he might have unwittingly created an even bigger problem for the Supreme Court itself. If pursued in litigation, the reasoning behind Crow’s refusal may end up unraveling the justices’ coy deflection of their legal obligation to comply with federal ethics legislation.

  The Hill

I wouldn't bet against the Supreme Court.

Crow’s rebuff, submitted by his attorney, bordered on frivolous, claiming that the Senate lacks “the authority to investigate” his personal friendship with Thomas. According to Crow, the committee’s request, therefore, violated the separation of powers because “Congress does not have the constitutional power to impose ethics rules and standards on the Supreme Court.”

As many others have pointed out, Congress has often enacted laws that create requirements or set standards for the Supreme Court, beginning with the Judiciary Act of 1789. Congress determines the number of justices, which has fluctuated over the years, prescribes the oath of office, establishes the quorum requirement, sets the time and place of meetings, provides staffing levels and has even required the justices to “ride circuit” (although not since 1911.)

[...]

For the past 30 years, the justices have continually waffled on whether they are bound by federal ethics laws. In 1991, they announced that they would voluntarily comply with certain provisions of the Ethics Reform Act, while specifically declining to concede “the validity of the act . . . in whole or in part.”

In his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice Roberts pointedly noted that the court “has never addressed whether Congress may impose [financial reporting, gift, and recusal] requirements on the Supreme Court.”

If they can decide Congress doesn't have the power, then there's nothing to check the Court.

Until now, Congress has been unable to test or challenge the justices’ prickly refusal to acknowledge the binding authority of ethics legislation. There is no way to sue the Supreme Court for ethical equivocation.

[...]

If Crow attempts to quash an eventual subpoena, raising the claims he asserted in his letter to the Judiciary Committee, the courts will have no choice but to adjudicate the Senate’s authority to legislate regarding the Supreme Court’s “ethics rules and standards.”

[...]

And earlier this year, the justices’ Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices again stressed the voluntary nature of their compliance with ethics legislation.

[...]

Crow’s obduracy, however, has created an opening for clarifying litigation. In a follow-up letter, Durbin warned Crow that his arguments “lack merit and are insufficient bases on which to decline to provide the information the committee has requested.” He subsequently cautioned Crow that “all options” including a subpoena, “are on the table moving forward,” if the documents are not forthcoming. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued the same warning on behalf of the Finance Committee.

We are in serious need of court reform.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.