on the court. last week, roberts declined an invitation from chairman dick durbin to appear before the committee, in a letter, the chief justice quote, judicial independence. let s bring back my panel. charles, i m sure americans, ordinary moroccans would be surprised to hear that pretty much everyone involved in our legal establishment in this country, from prosecutors to judges, at every level, are bound by basic ethics codes and rules. except for the nine most important legal people in this country. right. that is bizarre. and i have to ask you, when you were a prosecutor, if you hadn t even had percent of what a clarence thomas is accused of doing, which is 12 job? i would ve had a job, i might not even have at a license. i think that s an important distinction to make. what we are talking about here is the notion of privilege, and how privileges embed with each other all over the place. which is understandable, to a point. when you have circles that are at a certain level,
of ethics codes as other federal judges are subject to so that this kind of behavior is not permissible, and if it happens, there s there are penalties, but we don t have that right now. so there is actually a lot of space. for justice thomas tip, engage in this kind of relationship, but i think we need to look at the structures of the codes, not just at the individual and as we had a guest on yesterday from fixed the court who says that he wishes actually there was more liberal justice who did the same thing so it wouldn t be in a partisan framework that these rules could actually be in place. but that s not in place so likely things won t change in the near term. julian zelizer, thanks so much. still ahead after spending a quarter of a century in prison and avoiding execution three times the murder conviction of a death row inmate in oklahoma could be vacated that is next.
that? i agree. the bipartisan commission that president biden setup also recommended that the court adopt it will of ethics, and we have noted the difficulties that the courts have gotten themselves into faye allowing themselves to escape, abiding by the ethics codes voluntarily. there is an interesting constitutional question about whether congress could force the court to adopt this, because as there is a bill pending in congress, but chief justice roberts has suggested that if congress has the power to create the judicial conference which combines the lower courts, but because the supreme court is in apparently come up on constitution, congress cannot force it to obey ethics it doesn t want to. we also saw during the sexual harassment scandal, and the court under pressure adopted sexual harassment status for the entire judiciary. maybe less strict in congress would ve adopted, but it just confirms dahlia basic point that the court has total discretion dak as it will.