The Unjust Attacks on Thomas, Alito, and Roberts

Recent criticisms of them are rooted in double standards

The U.S. Supreme Court is under attack. This assault aims to destroy one of the pillars of our constitutional order: an independent judiciary, appointed and confirmed by the political branches but thereafter answerable only to the process of impeachment and to its own oath to apply the Constitution and written laws. Judicial independence, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78, is essential to ensuring the federal courts’ “inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of the Constitution.”

The motivation for the current multipronged offensive is transparently ideological: Liberals and progressives lost control of the Court, and they are now willing to trash it if the alternative is for it to remain outside their control. They would prefer that there be no part of the federal government that is inflexible, uniform, and fearless in following the Constitution.

In recent weeks, the central front in this war has been “ethics.” The justices have faced a two-pronged offensive. One prong is Democratic politicians arguing for new ethics rules, the centerpiece of which was a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 2 chaired by Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. The other prong is a daily media drip of stories purporting to show ethical violations by the conservative justices and their families. When nothing is available on the justices, the critics go after conservative legal groups such as the Federalist Society, activists such as Leonard Leo, and even a law school the justices have taught at.