Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland said Tuesday they plan to introduce legislation to hold Supreme Court justices accountable.
The two appeared on MSNBC with host Chris Hayes to discuss conversations that took place during a Democrat round table on Capitol Hill regarding Supreme Court ethics.
"To have any one of our co-equal branches be completely unaccountable to the others is paving the path to authoritarianism, tyranny, the abuse of power in the United States, and it is structurally completely unsustainable," Ocasio-Cortez told Hayes.
“And so, it is not a question…of if Congress has jurisdiction and power over the Supreme Court. It is, what power are we going to exercise in order to rein in a fundamentally unaccountable and rogue court?” Ocasio-Cortez said. "And one of the beautiful things about today's roundtable is that we were able to also call in one of our Senate colleagues, Senator Whitehouse, who has been pursuing extensive investigations into the dark money network that has been exerting influence over the court. And we raised and discussed a varying degree of measures, from term limits to an actual binding ethics standard.
"And, also, Congressman Raskin and myself will be introducing forthcoming legislation to even have the Supreme Court be subject to the same $50 gift rule that he and I are subject to, as everyone else who are members of Congress," she added.
WATCH-- @AOC on the lack of Supreme Court ethics standards:
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 12, 2024
"It is completely unacceptable. And not only is it unacceptable. But to have any one of our co-equal branches be completely unaccountable to the others is paving the path to authoritarianism." pic.twitter.com/31QNtpVfnT
“It’s the highest court in the land with the lowest ethical standards. These are the only governmental officials in the land who are not governed by a binding ethics code. There’s no process by which we can hold any of them accountable,” Raskin said.
“And so, we need to clean that up. And that’s why we said we’re going to start with something simple that the whole country will be able to understand immediately and intuitively,” Raskin added. “We want a $50 gift ban for U.S. Supreme Court justices. They make $300,000 a year. Pay for your own lunch and pay for your own vacation.”