Brennan Center: “Justice Alito’s display of flags associated with the January 6 insurrection shows that the current system isn’t working. In the summer of 2023, Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal that Congress has no authority to regulate the Supreme Court, despite the ethical regulations Congress already imposes on the justices. Around the time he made this erroneous statement, the justice saw fit to fly a flag in his yard that had been carried by January 6 rioters and associated with the “Stop the Steal” insurrection movement, marking the second time since January 6 that such a flag had flown outside of the justice’s residence.  A sitting justice openly flying flags associated with the insurrection highlights the shortcomings of the Supreme Court’s recently released nonbinding code of conduct, and it underscores the critical role the Constitution envisions Congress playing to protect the public’s trust in the Court when the justices themselves fail to do so. Alito’s behavior violates multiple canons of the ethics code the Court adopted for itself in November. At a basic level, the public display of symbols associated with an active political movement constitutes political activity, which the code explicitly forbids. His actions also call into question whether he will preside impartially over January 6 cases, as the code requires justices do “at all times.” Perhaps even more troubling than the underlying conduct is Alito’s subsequent failure to disavow it. Since January 6, federal judges across the country have heard hundreds of criminal cases involving January 6 rioters. Alito’s failure to distance himself from these symbols threatens to legitimize a movement that presents an ongoing security risk to the justice’s colleagues in the lower federal courts — and to the rule of law in general. The judges hearing these cases have faced unprecedented waves of harassment and   violent threats against themselves and their families.. Such threats against judges for the discharge of their duties undermine an independent judiciary, which the ethics code requires justices to uphold and preserve. When the Court released its code of conduct, we knew that it would prove unable to rein in the unethical behavior of the justices. Unlike ethics regulations that bind lower federal judges and many state supreme court justices, the code lacks a process for identifying and investigating misconduct and an enforcement mechanism to ensure that the justices actually abide by the ethical principles to which they have agreed…”