Sotomayor Follows Witness Prep Advice in Deflecting Question on Supreme Court Recusals
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was careful to avoid a simmering controversy over Supreme Court recusals when answering audience questions on Friday after receiving a diversity award from the Philadelphia Bar Association.
The recusal questioner was Abraham Reich, co-chairman of Fox Rothschild in Philadelphia and a member of the ABA House of Delegates. The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have not adopted a comprehensive code of judicial ethics, Reich says. As a result, issues of recusal or disqualification are left up to individual justices, with no requirements for review or transparency.
“In a high profile case, the failure to recuse could have a significant impact,” Reich tells the ABA Journal. “I asked her whether or not there would be a change” to make the justices subject to ethics guidelines on the subject.
The Legal Intelligencer has Sotomayor’s answer to the question: “I don’t know.” Then she explained her short answer: “I used to teach my potential witnesses just to answer the questions asked.”
Reich says he is interested in the subject because of a proposed resolution sent to the ABA House of Delegates in February. It urged states to establish procedures for judicial disqualification and called on states that elect their judges to adopt disclosure requirements for litigants and lawyers that provided campaign support.
The measure was postponed until the ABA Annual Meeting in August, and could be revised before that time.
The New York Times weighed in on the recusal issue in an op-ed on Wednesday. The Times complained that the justices are refusing to confront the recusal issue “despite months of questions about possible cozy friendships, suspected political biases and family ties.”
The newspaper supports a proposal by 107 law professors that the justices should follow the ethics code that applies to other federal judges.
Previous coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Bill Would Require Supreme Court Justices to Explain Recusals, Create Ethics Review Process”
ABAJournal.com: “100 Law Profs Lobby Congress to Apply Ethics Code to US Supreme Court Justices”
ABAJournal.com: “Critics ‘Seem Bent on Undermining’ Supreme Court, Justice Thomas Says”
