After attacks on a faculty member over comments about Gaza, faculty and students call on Cornell to take action.

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The Supreme Court’s new ethics code is a nod at the public pressure the court is facing. Beyond that, it will do little to change the justices’ behavior.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Hillary Clinton: Hamas must go. Sphere and loathing in Las Vegas The plight of the eldest daughter The meaning of “sir” and “ma’am”

An Unstable Structure

Don’t worry, the Supreme Court said to America yesterday. Though it may not be enforceable, the Court at least has a formal code of conduct now. The Court has been facing an onslaught of public pressure after reports that justices, particularly Clarence Thomas, had engaged in behavior that an average person could deem improper for representatives of the highest court in the land, such as receiving undisclosed gifts from wealthy conservatives. This code, the first in the Court’s history, is signed by all nine justices, and lays out “rules and principles” for the justices’ behavior. Its publication is an acknowledgment that the public is dissatisfied with the Court, but beyond that, it is more symbolic than anything else.

The 15-page document opens with a paragraph-long statement emphasizing that the rules contained within it are largely not new. Their codification is an attempt to “dispel” the “misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.” The code does not explicitly restrict any of the activities, such as undisclosed gifts and travel, that have been drawing attention to the justices in recent months, and its guidelines on recusals in the event of potential conflicts of interest are vague. (A progressive group noted that the document includes should 53 times and must just six.) It also doesn’t acknowledge the existence of any current or past misbehavior, Noah Rosenblum, an assistant law professor at NYU, told me. But the introduction of the code, he said, “does suggest that, in fact, the pressure is getting to the Supreme Court, which, if you believe that the Supreme Court has gone rogue, is a really useful and important thing to know.”

The Supreme Court has long operated, as the justices explain in the opening statement of the code, according to “the equivalent of common law ethics rules,” using guidelines derived from a variety of sources, such as historical practice and the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary. The idea of the Court formalizing its ethics guidelines had been percolating for a while. Back in 2019, Justice Elena Kagan said at a budget hearing that John Roberts was exploring the idea of establishing a code of conduct for just the Supreme Court. In 2022, a group of legal scholars wrote an open letter to Justice Roberts urging the Court to adopt such a code. “We simply believe that a written Code, even if primarily aspirational, would have a broad salutary impact,” the professors wrote.

But public pressure, including from lawmakers in Congress, picked up starting in the spring, when ProPublica released the first in a series of stories about Clarence Thomas’s close relationship with the Republican billionaire Harlan Crow. Other outlets soon published reports on the lavish gifts and trips Thomas received from wealthy businessmen and donors. As Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, told me, Thomas is seen as the “violator in chief.” But, Dorf noted, other justices’ behavior has been called into question as well. Those wishing to present this as a bipartisan issue, Dorf said, have also pointed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose staff reportedly urged libraries and colleges to buy her books. And conservative Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing trip with Paul Singer, a billionaire who had cases before the Court in following years. (The Supreme Court responded that it works with Sotomayor and her staff to ensure compliance with ethics guidance during book events. Alito said that he never discussed Singer’s business and that he was unaware of his connection to the cases.)

My colleague Adam Serwer, who covers political and legal issues for The Atlantic, told me that “much of the conduct that has exposed the justices as partisan actors” would not seem to be prohibited by these guidelines. The code is not a move toward stricter ethics rules; rather, Adam argued, it might have the opposite effect: “It is an attempt to remove any motivation for Congress to impose restrictions on the Court that have actual teeth.” Adam added that the only apparent punishment for breaking the rules will be public shame—of which the Court has seen plenty lately. As Adam reminded me, “public outrage and tarnishing of the Court’s prestige” is why the justices likely felt pressured to adopt the code in the first place.

The American public has soured on the Court in recent years, in the midst of ethics scandals and controversial decisions on topics such as abortion, student loans, and affirmative action. According to a Pew Research Center poll from July, voters are more likely to see the Supreme Court as conservative than they were a few years ago, and just 44 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Court—the lowest since the survey began, in 1987. The new code of conduct is not likely to change things. For those concerned that the justices’ behavior compromises the integrity of the Court, “there’s nothing in this code of ethics that should reassure them,” Rosenblum told me.

The Supreme Court is an anomaly in America’s justice system; other judges have to adhere to strict, enforceable ethics rules. To understand the ethics mechanisms ruling most American judges, picture a three-legged stool, Rosenblum suggests. Leg one is a code of conduct, leg two is an advisory body, and leg three is an enforceable disciplinary procedure. The Supreme Court has long had no such stool. Now, with its new code of conduct, it has one leg. That does not make a very stable structure.

Related:

The Supreme Court just keeps deciding it should be even more powerful. The care and feeding of the Supreme Court justices

Today’s News

The House passed a short-term funding bill to successfully prevent a government shutdown. Al-Shifa Hospital says that it has buried more than 170 people in a mass grave. According to the United Nations, only one of 35 hospitals in the Gaza Strip is reportedly operational. A “March for Israel” took place in Washington, D.C., to protest rising anti-Semitism and demand the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

Evening Read

Painting by Debra Cartwright. Source: University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center.

How Black Americans Kept Reconstruction Alive

By Peniel E. Joseph

The Civil War produced two competing narratives, each an attempt to make sense of a conflict that had eradicated the pestilence of slavery.

Black Americans who believed in multiracial democracy extolled the emancipationist legacy of the war. These Reconstructionists envisioned a new America finally capable of safeguarding Black dignity and claims of citizenship. Black women and men created new civic, religious, political, educational, and economic institutions. They built thriving towns and districts, churches and schools. In so doing, they helped reimagine the purpose and promise of American democracy …

Black Reconstructionists told the country a new story about itself. These were people who believed in freedom beyond emancipation. They shared an expansive vision of a compassionate nation with a true democratic ethos.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

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Culture Break

Read. “Sitcom,” a new poem by Jericho Brown.

“Since, her long hair curled, / Combed out, and pushed up / Into a volume so thick, you felt / Both the power of an Afro and / The requirement of a relaxer”

Watch. Nathan Fielder’s newest show, The Curse, is weird and off-putting, yet intensely compelling (streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime).

Play our daily crossword.

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Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week, I noted the polarizing conflict in the Middle East and asked how citizens of faraway countries should handle differences about the best way forward so as not to tear their own societies apart.

Replies have been edited for length and clarity.

Charles counsels restraint:

I just think people need to remember they aren’t required to publicly declare their opinions on world events. We all need to calm down, try to educate ourselves on the history behind the conflict, and listen to the people actually being directly affected by this tragedy, instead of just pumping more empty, ill-informed rhetoric into the world.

Tom urges “great forbearance.” He writes:

I generally think I have answers to every question but on Israel versus the Palestinians, I am at a loss. The monstrous atrocities by Hamas on October 7 have placed the Israelis in the most clear-cut, no-win situation I have ever seen. In the interest of full disclosure, my sympathy is with Israel.

How should we address this difficult situation? I come from a mixed family, politically. My mother and father were both Iowans and officers in World War II, but my dad was a Republican and my mother, a New Deal Democrat. The political etiquette in my family was to state your views and listen respectfully to the views of others. The expectation was that you would think about what you had heard and come to your own conclusion, which I think is the most reasonable intellectual expectation, and a positive model for political discourse. People have a right to demonstrate, and without recrimination. In my youth, half a century ago, we demonstrated against the Vietnam War, sometimes daily. It is best if pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations not compete for time or place. If they must coincide, let the police keep them from coming to blows, preferably with overwhelming numbers that obviate the need for force.

But I hope the two sides will listen to each other, with courtesy and an open mind. A lot of what is said at rallies is probably nasty, radical one-upmanship, but some of it will be selfless and thoughtful and should be heard and reflected upon.

Let us treat with respect those on the other side whose views are heartfelt and reasonable even if we disagree. As for narcissistic rabble-rousers, don’t play their game by becoming part of the rabble. We are all adrift in this together, and we should not forsake the liberal values that have served us so well. Our goal should be to guide the misguided back to reason, not to crush them. College students have a strong propensity to adopt causes, but the SAT scores of students at Harvard, Yale, and Cornell suggest that they can be reasoned with.

Jaleelah urges consistency. She writes:

Slander should be off the table. I am more than happy to debate people who come to me with the belief that Israel should continue its occupation of the West Bank. I will not debate people who claim that I am a terrorist sympathizer repeatedly and unapologetically. Secondly, people should select the right time and place for their political monologues. The optimal time to defend the moral code of Israel’s police is certainly not right after I have shared that they killed one of my relatives. Finally, people should be more open to acknowledging ideological inconsistencies in their stances.

One of the worst inconsistencies on all sides of the Israel-Palestine conversation concerns slogans and identifiers. Many people uncritically switch between the positions that a) slogans and identifiers have concrete meanings that can be traced back to their first known use and b) slogans and identifiers should be judged by the actions of their adopters.

When my grandfather uses the term “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” he cheers for a world where he can return to his ancestors’ graves and his living siblings’ homes without being shot. The slogan predates Hamas. But surely anti-Semites use this phrase to cheer for ridding the land of Jewish people. Growing up, I had lots of conversations with my Jewish friends about the term Zionist. In their eyes, the term described supporters of Jewish people’s right to live freely and practice their religion in their ancestral homeland. And they were right! The term predates Theodore Herzl and the “colonial” project he proposed. (Another inconsistency: Should political groups be defined by quotes from their founding documents or their current stated and implied positions? If it’s the former, Hamas is genocidal and political Zionism is a colonial project. If it’s the latter, neither of these things is quite as certain.) But surely some people who want to exterminate Palestinians claim the term Zionist.

Consistency dials down frustration quite a lot. It also makes people more amenable to your position.

L.K. encourages intellectual humility:

When dealing with controversial issues in an ideologically diverse, open society, here’s one golden rule to keep uppermost in mind: Remember to entertain doubt. There is always another view that we haven’t considered; there is always additional information that we don’t (yet) have; and there is always a greater wisdom that we can adopt if and when we keep these admonitions in mind. A sure sign that we need to entertain more doubt is that we feel absolutely certain about our cause. If we’re part of a crowd storming the Capitol, that’s a sign that we are in desperate need of more doubt. More to the immediate point, if we are posting online images of para-gliders (in support of Hamas) or tearing down posters of kidnapped Jewish children, it simply could not be more clear that we are suffering from a profound and dangerous absence of doubt. And when all doubt is gone, we have arrived at fundamentalism (of the religious or secular variety).

The beauty of remembering to entertain doubt is that it need not destabilize us. We are still free to proceed with a chosen course of action. In fact, with doubt in mind, we are more likely to spot and correct our own mistakes. We can still hold beliefs. But with doubt in mind, we will remain receptive to feedback that can help us strengthen or abandon those beliefs as necessary. Rather than weakening us, doubt can provide strength and resilience. And that is the kind of strength and resilience a society will need to settle its most profound differences in as much of a peaceful manner as possible.

Z.H. tries to influence others by example:

Contentious topics such as the Middle East have a way of tearing people apart. I have my own opinions, yet throughout my life I have found myself able to stay friendly with those who hold opinions opposite myself on highly divisive subjects. I do this by keeping in mind the aphorism “Be the change you want to see in the world.” How? I keep in mind my shared powerlessness with the people I am involved with. I keep in mind that my goal for the world is more peace, not less. The people I know don’t have any real influence or power over the Middle East conflict. So let’s say I try to bully someone into changing their opinion. What does that accomplish in practice if I succeed?

Almost nothing. The Middle East conflict will go on all the same. What do I accomplish if I fail? A damaged relationship and more disharmony in the world—which is the much more likely outcome of arguing. Virtually no one changes their opinion when they feel they are on the defensive. I rarely succeed in having someone change their position completely, but by approaching them with empathy and curiosity to try to understand their views and how they developed them, I often succeed in moderating their positions toward mine. This is how others succeed in moderating my opinions and beliefs as well.I want more peace and diplomacy in the world. Manifesting that outcome means focusing on what I can control—myself, by being peaceful and diplomatic with others.

I see no point in fighting with someone over having a differing political opinion on something neither of us has any real power over. Save the aggressive energy for your politicians, not your friends and family. Ask yourself what getting into a heated disagreement is accomplishing. It’s often a Pyrrhic victory. It’s good for people to care, but channel that energy into constructive efforts, not destructive ones. Peace in the world starts by having peace with one another. How can we hope for Palestinians and Israelis to have peace if we can’t even have peace ourselves when discussing the topic?

Chris emphasizes the need for compromise:

Both sides have legitimate historical grievances and both are guilty of abuses. If you’re serious about a solution, both sides are going to [have to] compromise on what they now regard as nonnegotiable principles; both sides will have to leave a lot of scores unsettled; and neither side is going to be happy with the final outcome. But unless you’re an unhinged militant, any outcome is preferable to interminable warfare. If you’re not willing to start from this premise, you’re not serious about a settlement. You’re part of the problem.