Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
On April 25, all nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court signed a Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices, which they submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“In regard to recusal,” the justices unanimously declared that they “follow the same general principles and statutory standards as other federal judges.”
It took Justice Samuel Alito less than five months to renege on his written commitment to his colleagues and the public. In a four-page statement issued on Sept. 8, Alito declined to recuse himself from a major tax case, without a single citation, reference, or acknowledgement of either the federal recusal statute or the “general principles” that he had so recently agreed to follow.