• Chief Justice John Roberts refers Kavanaugh ethics complaints to seperate judges
    9 replies, posted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/roberts-asks-federal-judges-to-handle-kavanaugh-complaints/2018/10/10/eefe53c6-cccd-11e8-ad0a-0e01efba3cc1_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.66543b0f683b WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts is referring ethics complaints against new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to federal judges in Colorado and neighboring states. The complaints deal with statements Kavanaugh made during his confirmation hearings. They were filed originally with Kavanaugh’s old court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Roberts took no action on them while Kavanaugh’s nomination was pending. He received the first three of 15 eventual complaints on Sept. 20, a week before Kavanaugh’s angry denial of a sexual assault allegation by Christine Blasey Ford. It’s possible the complaints will never be investigated if the lower-court judges determine they have no jurisdiction over a Supreme Court justice under the judiciary’s ethics rules. The judges may be forced to conclude “that intervening events have rendered the allegations moot or make remedial action impossible,” said Arthur Hellman, an ethics professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Another ethicist, Stephen Gillers of New York University, disagreed that the complaints are moot. Kavanaugh remains a federal judge and the complaints “allege misconduct that occurred while Kavanaugh was on the D.C. Circuit and subject to the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. Any violation of the Code does not disappear because he is now on another federal court,” Gillers said in an email. But Gillers said the complaints “may be found not to be meritorious in the end.” The judiciary’s rules allow members of the public to lodge complaints about federal judges. They typically are dealt with by experienced judges in the courthouse or region where a judge serves. Judges who receive complaints have a range of options that include dismissing them out of hand, having local judges investigate them or asking Roberts, in his capacity as head of the federal judiciary, to assign the complaints to judges in a different part of the country. Roberts assigned the complaints to the ethics council of the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to deal with the complaints, according to a letter posted Wednesday on the D.C. Circuit’s website. The first public word of the complaints came Saturday when D.C. Circuit Judge Karen Henderson acknowledged that complaints about Kavanaugh had been filed. They only “seek investigations ... of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court,” Henderson said in a statement. Details of the complaints have not been made public. Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, typically deals with ethics complaints, but he apparently stepped aside from complaints against Kavanaugh. Garland had been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, but Senate Republicans never acted on the nomination. Roberts’ letter was sent to Judge Timothy Tymkovich, the 10th Circuit’s chief judge. Tymkovich was on President Donald Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees. Tymkovich is super conservative but Roberts's letter instructed him to be not squelch the complaints and call a judicial council.
I can understand why Garland decided not to do anything with it, but why roberts?
Trump dumped a drunk frat boy in his office and now he has to deal with it. He's conservative but he cares about the public perception, legitimacy, and nonpartisanship of the courts, probably wants the ethics complaints to be investigated as uncontroversially as possible in the wake of Kav's nomination.
...so he passes the buck to someone else? Do Roberts and Kavanaugh have a history together that I'm not aware of?
Kavanaugh worked to get Bush to nominate him on the SCOTUS, initially as an Associate but later as Chief when Rehnquist died.
I guess politics has gotten to be such a small pool of elites that everyone knows each other.
They serve on the same court now, so there is an inherent conflict regarding impartiality. Ideally, ethics complaints are handled by a separate and objective third party. Unlike the vast majority of Republicans, Roberts actually cares about the rule of law and judicial ethics. It makes sense that he doesn’t want to invite even the shadow of a conflict of interest.
Maybe Roberts is doing this because he's tired of Kavanaugh inviting him over to play beer pong every night.
"Dude it's 12:30 we have court tomorrow, we have to find a dry cleaner get get the beer stains out of your robe"
"Oh shit bro, I must have left my weed in the pocket of my jacket. We have to get back to the laundromat!" Directed by Seth Rogen eh eh eh
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.