Don’t Go Fishin’ Where You Don’t Know The Waters

Three quick thoughts:

1. The Ginni Thomas texts were REALLY bad.

2. Justice Thomas’s work is intellectually rigorous and bears no resemblance to his wife’s conspiracies.

3. He should recuse himself from any case that could involve his wife’s correspondence or activities.

— David French (@DavidAFrench) March 25, 2022

1 and 3 I completely agree with. But 2? No: not even close.

RBG’s opinions were “intellectually rigorous.” Scalia’s opinions were what non-lawyers thought were “intellectually rigorous.” No one who knows anything about the law has ever accused Thomas of knowing enough to be qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. For years he was just Scalia’s lap dog. He hasn’t improved since Scalia passed. His opinions are distinguishable from his wife’s Q-Anon fantasies only in that he’s never made reference to “QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

I knew Ginni Thomas was swimming in some VERY pilled waters, but this is *high*-grade exposure to The Bullshit.

Steve Pieczenik — a frequent guest on Alex Jones’ show, but not a former CIA director — is incredibly fringey on his own, but “QFS-BLOCKCHAIN” is, uh, DEEP in the lore https://t.co/rTu39vMqij pic.twitter.com/CY2pVjftlS

— The Q Origins Project (@QOrigins) March 24, 2022

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what his wife is texting about.

And while we’re on the subject:

The problem, of course, is the absence of an enforcement mechanism.

That doesn’t alter the analysis of *whether* a Justice should’ve recused from a particular case, but it reinforces the need for #SCOTUS to be subject to a more meaningful — and enforceable — set of ethics rules.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) March 25, 2022

There is a “flag code” in the U.S.Code (federal statutes). But if you hang a raggedy U.S. flag at your house; or leave it out overnight, or drop it in the dirt, no one is going to arrest you.  For the simple reason that the “flag code” has no enforcement provisions.

Any statute can become a criminal statute if you add enforcement provisions (well, there are limits, but for illustrative purposes). Without them, even a law defining murder is toothless.

Would provisions added to 28 U.S.C.sec. 455 giving Congress or an executive agency (I wouldn’t trust a panel of lower court judges) powers of enforcement be found by the Supreme Court to be a violation of separation of powers?

Yeah, probably.

Then what?