Courts Chairman Johnson Addresses Center for Popular Democracy on Moore v. Harper

The case that will come before the Supreme Court this week - Moore v. Harper - embodies the crossroads that we confront as a country. The obscure, strained interpretation of the Constitution that the petitioners are promoting in this case may very well attract the attention and the votes of several Supreme Court justices, if not a majority.

That naturally raises the question of how we got where we are today. While I do not pretend to have a simple answer, as Chairman of the House Subcommittee with oversight of the federal courts, I have been particularly concerned with structural features of the Supreme Court that make it all too easy for well-funded outside interest groups to promote and push their preferred outcomes with little-to-no public transparency or accountability.

I authored an amicus brief in this case on just this topic: namely, the number of other amicus briefs that were submitted in the Moore case where there were hidden connections between the different filers of those briefs, individuals and groups who attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and notorious sources of dark-money. Although the Moore case stands out on this front, this phenomenon of undisclosed funding behind Supreme Court amicus briefs is a perpetual and longstanding problem. It allows well-resourced parties to create the impression that their positions have a lot of support, even though the support may all come from one, or a few, sources. At its extreme, it is a kind of judicial lobbying that has the power to make extreme positions seem plausible, even acceptable.

Fortunately, this description of the problem also hints at the solution: more transparency, more accountability. I have introduced several bills that would help create a version of the guardrails that curb excessive influence in Congress and the Executive branch for the Judicial branch, such as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.

After all, the Constitution left the details of how the Supreme Court operates to Congress, as a check on the power of the judicial branch. At a time when the Supreme Court's public approval rating is lower than it has ever been, these ethics and transparency reforms may be exactly what is needed to restore public confidence in the Court-to assure the public that the justices follow the facts and the law in each case, that they are not above the law, and that they will apply the rule of law fairly, without bias or prejudice. This is the Supreme Court our country needs and deserves.