# The Supreme Court Did This to Itself  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Dahlia Lithwick]] - Full Title:: The Supreme Court Did This to Itself - Category: #articles - URL: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/supreme-court-trump-cases-democracy-disaster.html ## Highlights > The Supreme Court is on a collision course with itself, and it’s not clear that the justices even know ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cejh04rzszv81g7gpd5x4)) > In addition to the bottomless evidence of judicial freebies and junkets that were not disclosed by justices bound by both disclosure and recusal rules ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cn3pr2sqpjjvhfcqfhham)) > Then this week, Politico produced another [in-depth report of how a bunch of millionaires](https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus) and conservative activists—afraid that Justice Clarence Thomas might leave the court if he didn’t get a pay raise and nice lifestyle perks—conspired to get him pay raises and lifestyle perks ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cmrx2nyyw30em7yc48j8b)) > [Added to that, there’s the phenomenally reported New York Times story from last week](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/supreme-court-dobbs-roe-abortion.html) about the ways in which the Supreme Court’s conservative members manipulated and distorted the outcome in the *Dobbs* case overturning *Roe v. Wade* in order to try to keep up appearances, even as they phoned in their work on the case to achieve the partisan outcomes for which they were seated ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cntpdm020tp9nc5yebxtf)) > The two stories—political corruption and political cases—are so inextricably connected that one almost wants to weep at the rate at which they have been force-multiplied as disasters in the making in a matter of weeks, and not because the press is out to discredit the high court, but because the court has been so hellbent on discrediting itself and then refusing to cop to it ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cwapj1v30z1sv2hsdntqq)) > Moreover, justices should be mindful as to whether their spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding” or is “likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.” We know Thomas is capable of applying this test to himself in theory because, for reasons unknown, he removed himself from a case last October involving John Eastman, principal architect of one of the key legal plots to keep Trump in power. But will he do the same when the stakes are much, much higher? And why on God’s Earth is he being permitted to decide these high-stakes questions at all? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9ctxex52nnwjp381wzgsec)) > In the coming months, the public will have to sit with the fact that Justice Samuel Alito told Wall Street Journal opinion writers that the [court is untouchable by Congress](https://www.wsj.com/articles/samuel-alito-the-supreme-courts-plain-spoken-defender-precedent-ethics-originalism-5e3e9a7) and with the fact that when the [Senate sought testimony from the chief justice last year he just refused to show up](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/john-roberts-declines-senate-testimony-invite). And the public will have to just get really comfortable with the fact that this imperial court thinks that kind of thing is fine ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9cyema2bj2s1vzaytz1703)) > For years, some of the most vocal critics of the court’s ethical lapses, its lack of transparency, and its refusals to take seriously its own brokenness and errors, have warned that the day would come when an election would be decided by a body that has refused to clean house and has blamed the press and the academy for the stench of its own illegitimacy ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9czj6f7vpnt2karbnxwdn3)) > Lavish world cruises, secret deals with moneyed donors, threats to step down unless someone ponied up with a pay raise, fishing trips with parties who have business before the court, an [amicus brief industrial complex wholly bought and paid for by billionaire donations](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/03/supreme-court-amicus-briefs-leonard-leo-00127497), leaked drafts, and secret speeches are not the stuff of constitutional democracy, or infallibility, or finality ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hj9d1hkbhqz459qh84t0z8r1))