Celebrity Justices compromise the Supreme Court

The real problem with US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attending the Grammys wasn’t that it revealed her true colors as a liberal, but that it showed the slow and steady erosion of the court’s institutional reserve.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, demanded that Chief Justice John Roberts launch an investigation into Jackson alleging she breached ethics rules by appearing at the anti-ICE event.

“Americans deserve a Supreme Court that is impartial and above political influence,” Blackburn gravely pronounced. “When a Justice participates in such a highly politicized event, it raises ethical questions. We need an investigation into Justice Jackson’s ability to remain impartial.”

Yes, the crowd at the Grammys was overwhelmingly anti-Trump, and yes Jackson was there (she’d been nominated for a Grammy for her narration of a children’s book). But what her appearance really demonstrated was that the court’s carefully cultivated reputation for staying above the political fray has been damaged beyond repair.

Jackson’s appearance and the potential conflict of interest it poses is a misstep that has become increasingly commonplace on the court, whose members in recent years more and more appear at public events, write books, give interviews and otherwise carefully nurture their public personae.

These events place jurists in situations where whatever they say or do can be used by opponents to impute impure motives and an ideological agenda

This increasing public profile has in one sense brought about a welcome demystification of the nation’s highest court. It was refreshing, for example, to see Amy Coney Barrett on her recent book tour take dozens of questions from the audience, patiently hearing everyone out. There was nothing at all patronizing about her. She came across as very normal and likable.

The question is whether Jackson’s appearance would give rise to the idea that she can’t be an impartial judge when it comes to matters involving President Trump. But Jackson already has a lengthy record opposing the administration. Her showing up at the Grammys doesn’t tell us anything that isn’t already widely known about her jurisprudence.

In 2023, the court was rocked by stories in ProPublica detailing a decades long friendship between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

It turned out that Thomas had vacationed on multiple occasions with Crow and his family, on his luxury yacht and at his Adirondacks estate, and flown repeatedly on Crow’s private jet. ProPublica reported that the cost of one of the trips for Thomas and his family – an Indonesian island-hopping cruise on Crowe’s yacht – would have been around $500,000, were he to book such a trip on his own.

That’s a breathtaking sum and should give anyone pause, regardless of politics. Thomas is a beloved figure on the right, and in the conservative leaning press, which came forward after the fact with not terribly convincing arguments that the ethical missteps were illusory since Thomas and Crow were longtime friends and Crow had no cases before the court. A baseline cannon of judicial ethics is that jurists comport themselves in a way that guards against even an appearance of impropriety.

Yet, the charge that Thomas might be swayed by Crow’s gifts doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Thomas is perhaps the most reliable conservative vote on the Supreme Court and has been for decades. People like Crow don’t have to buy his support for their pet causes. They already have it.

The same could be said for Justice Jackson. Her appearance at the Grammys provided no dramatic revelations. She is a reliably left of center jurist. The event was predictably anti-Trump. So Jackson showing up as an honored guest at the Grammys wasn’t surprising and could hardly be seen as tipping the scales.

The Supreme Court has long been regarded as a tribunal where politics has inordinate impact. “The Supreme Court follows the election returns,” goes the old line attributed to Chicago humorist Finley Peter Dunne.

It was a conservative jurist, chief justice Roberts, who provided compelling evidence for this observation in his opinion upholding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The case hinged on the administration’s argument that Obamacare rules required all citizens to purchase insurance or pay a penalty. Republicans opposed the measure saying Congress does not have the authority to force a person to buy insurance – nor any other product. The penalty was therefore unconstitutional.

Roberts skinned that cat by declaring in his majority opinion that the fee Obamacare would have imposed wasn’t a penalty at all but rather a tax, and permissible under Congress’s taxing authority.

Voila, problem solved.

But nowhere in the text of the law was the word tax ever mentioned.

The opinion, which infuriated conservatives, was widely understood to reflect Roberts’ concern that the court would risk its institutional authority if it got too far outside the reigning political consensus by overturning the law.

The furious reaction to Roberts’ opinion underscored the court’s politically sensitive role. And it was a reminder that the court as an institution is perpetually under a microscope, so that even relatively trifling events, like say a Grammy appearance, take on outsized importance.

Best to avoid those pitfalls by keeping potential conflicts at arm’s length.