Since it’s all cash and carry, no law experience required. The SCOTUS - slushies, gas and red hot rulings.
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… NO NO NO you can’t PROVE that the bribe changed my behavior so it’s fine
That’s how it works 
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$20 can land people in jail but this guy get the benefit of “doubt”, …with fucking Venmo.
Just open a GoFundMe with the specific decision that needs to be overturned and call it a day.
This is as close to “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” equivalence in the legal system as one could get.
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It is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done
— Lord Hewart (Lord Chief Justice of England), Rex v. Sussex Justices, 1924
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Remember when America used to criticize other countries for corruption? Pepperidge Farm remembers!
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The scale of the reimbursement would be helpful. Colleagues from work associating years after work is not weird, but unusually large payments to pay for the pleasure of Thomas’s company is suspect.
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Every crappy entry level job I’ve had, I have to sign a bit of paper to say I’ve read & understood the anti-corruption policy and would need to report any gifts or favours from anyone the organisation might, in even the smallest way, be beholden to/affiliated with. And fuckin Judge Clarence gets a pass for Xmas party favours?Hmmmmm.
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Insert middle-person in the transaction and it’s okay? The law doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) work that way. You don’t have to commit the primary crime directly to be guilty of a secondary crime, i.e. conspiracy to commit an offence, procuring someone to commit a crime, etc.
And if US Supreme Court Justices are still lawyers following their appointment to the Court, can they be disbarred? If their little fraternity and their GOP friends won’t throw them off the bench, at least mete out some presumably embarrassing ego-bruising justice.
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I saw from your earlier comment that you once clerked for a federal judge, so I appreciate your perspective. However, I have a few comments. First, as I said before, if this is actually an example of ethical behavior by avoiding anyone receiving anything that could be said to be a gift by having everyone pay their way, why aren’t the parties involved saying that? It seems like that would be an effective way for them to kill the story. Hell, it might have prevented the story from even running in the first place. But no, instead, everyone involved said, “No comment,” making the whole situation look sketchy as hell.
Here’s the thing with the Supreme Court. Because there are few, if any, enforceable ethical standards for the Justices’ behavior, it is absolutely necessary that we trust them. And you are essentially saying, “Look, trust me, you can trust Clarence Thomas. You may disagree with him on issues, but he’s nice and friendly to people in person. Even Sonia Sotomayor says so. And you have no proof that any of these controversies has ever affected his decisions on cases.” And that’s just…I don’t know. I have no words. I’m sure you’re a competent attorney and a good person, but I don’t know that, and I can’t just take your word for that. Also, even if Thomas is a nice, personable, caring guy outside of Court, that doesn’t mean shit. Adolf Hitler, by every account I’ve ever read, loved children and animals, and was a nice, friendly guy to people in his personal life. He was still a bad person and a monster. For the Supreme Court more than any other institution in government, it is critically important that they avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety, and Thomas has not done that. He seems to be flouting what few rules do apply to SCOTUS, daring someone to make him follow them. A mythos has developed over the decades around Supreme Court Justices. We had this idea that they were better than us. That we could trust them. That while they might make decisions we disagreed with, they were always sincere and above reproach. I don’t know why the fuck we believed that about them. Probably because that’s how the media largely portrayed them. But it was never true. They are human, and they are prone to the same mistakes and misbehaviors that the rest of us mere mortals are. If we are going to continue with this system where there is no mechanism to hold them accountable, then they have to be completely above reproach in their behavior, and they have not been lately, if they ever were. And not just Thomas. Sotomayor has also made some iffy ethics choices. And the worst part of all of this is that the response from all of the Justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been “Trust us. You can trust us.” No, sorry, that’s not good enough. You have given us no reason to trust you. You gotta earn that back by allowing yourselves to be held accountable now.
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Blockquote don’t take it from me, take it from Justice Sotomoyor.
She says “He is the one Justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name…”
[…& Venmo account number]
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Memories. I used to get these large fuzzy line-art posters and you would colour them in with markers. They had similar designs, paisley patterns and such.
Lovely stuff, thanks.
This is not a group of college students sharing the costs of a rager.
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