Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has been at the center of a number of ethics controversies at the court recently, told the Wall Street Journal lawmakers need to give up on the idea of imposing new rules on the justices.
“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period,” he . But Alito’s comments appear to go much further, saying Congress cannot impose any requirements on the Supreme Court because it is part of an equal branch of government created by the U.S. Constitution.
Congress already controls one big aspect of the Supreme Court by setting how much it can spend annually, and the Constitution also notes its jurisdiction as a court of appeals is subject to “such regulations as the Congress may make.”
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Whitehouse, in a post on social media, said one of two interviewers, who wrote that they sat with Alito for four hours in total over two sessions ending in early July, is part of an effort to block an investigation into Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the libertarian Federalist Society that has been influential in picking GOP nominees to the courts.
News site TPM said that lawyer David Rivkin regularly writes for the Opinion section but is also part of a team with law firm BakerHostetler LLP that has a big taxation case set to come before the court that could decide whether a wealth tax would be constitutional.
Whitehouse posted, “Shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured Court — same folks keep popping up wearing new hats.”
