On Friday night, December 9, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to Politico, attended a “private holiday party” in the home of Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp. Kavanaugh’s decision to attend, reporter Lydia Wheeler writes in Bloomberg Law on December 12, “raises questions about when a justice’s personal relationships cross a line and become problematic.”’
One of the other people who attended Schlapp’s party, according to Politico, was MAGA Republican Stephen Miller, who was a policy adviser for the Trump Administration. Miller heads the America First Legal Foundation, a group that, Wheeler notes, “has interests in cases now pending before the Court.”
Kavanaugh’s decision to attend Schlapp’s party comes at a time when the High Court is suffering from historically low approval ratings. The Court’s unpopularity to a variety of things, including its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Other controversies that have dogged the High Court in recent months range from efforts by Ginni Thomas (wife of Justice Clarence Thomas) to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to allegations that Justice Samuel Alito or his wife leaked the Court’s decision in 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby before it was officially announced — an allegation that Alito has vehemently denied.
Wheeler notes that “Democrats have recently renewed calls for sitting Supreme Court justices to follow a formal judicial code of ethics.”
Tonja Jacobi, a professor at Emory University Law School in Atlanta, told Bloomberg Law, “Supreme Court justices should be extraordinarily careful in not only having no actual ethical difficulties, but having no appearance of an ethical conundrum as well…. The legitimacy of the Court at the moment is taking a severe beating.”
Charles Geyh, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of law, implied that Kavanaugh was showing very poor judgement by attending Schlapp’s party. Geyh told Bloomberg Law, “This is the worst possible time for this.”