What’s Behind Biden’s Call for Changes to US Supreme Court

US President Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass enforceable rules of conduct for justices of the Supreme Court as part of a larger proposal to overhaul the institution by imposing term limits. The court adopted a code of conduct for the first time in November, but it lacks an enforcement mechanism. It took up the code after justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito came under scrutiny for alleged ethical lapses.

ProPublica reported in 2023 that Thomas had accepted financial largesse from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, a Republican donor, that he’d failed to disclose. Among its findings were that Crow paid for at least a part of the private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, who was raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni. Crow also bought from Thomas’s family the Georgia home that Thomas’s mother lived in, and then spent tens of thousands of dollars making improvements to it. And Crow paid for lavish trips taken by Clarence and Ginni Thomas, using Crow’s private jet.