Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson attended the Grammy Awards over the weekend because her memoir, “Lovely One,” was nominated for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording. She lost to the Dalai Lama. Which, honestly… fair. Anyway, that should be the end of it, but it’s 2026 and Republicans need to find something to talk about instead of unleashing untrained, armed thugs on Minnesota to kidnap journalists and murder civilians, so Justice Jackson’s award nomination is the new ethics scandal.
There’s nothing improper about attending an awards ceremony for an award that you’re actually nominated for. But Senator Marsha Blackburn wants an investigation into whether Jackson’s attendance breached Supreme Court ethics because so many artists and presenters bashed ICE at the event. Blackburn’s letter claims that Jackson’s mere presence at an event where other people exercised their First Amendment rights somehow compromises her impartiality on immigration cases:
“While it is by no means unheard of or unusual for a Supreme Court justice to attend a public function, very rarely—if ever—have justices of our nation’s highest Court been present at an event at which attendees have amplified such far-left rhetoric,” Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote in a Thursday letter to [Chief Justice John] Roberts.
Presumably the “far-left rhetoric” is “Abolish ICE.” And if that’s the case, the bad news for Blackburn is that this is, according to polling, the mainstream American position now.
The ethical constraints on the Supreme Court are notoriously non-existent. Blackburn cites the toothless advice that the justices “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” The senator specifically worries that Jackson’s appearance in the same room where such radical thoughts as “maybe don’t imprison children without due process” might be expressed.
Blackburn recounted how Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) penned a letter to Roberts urging him to ensure that conservative Justice Samuel Alito would recuse himself in the 2020 election and Capitol riot cases because his wife put up a Revolutionary War-era flag at his house.
Right. But see how that’s, like, not at all the same thing? The proper analogy would be if Justice Jackson herself wore an ICE Out pin at the event. And if she did so, then that would be a good argument for recusal. But she did not. Which makes it very different than Sam Alito flying insurrection symbols outside his house in January 2021.
Third Circuit Judge Emil Bove, one of the architects of the DOJ’s contemptuous approach to deportations having reportedly counseling government lawyers to say “fuck you” to courts blocking illegal flights, attended a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. As opposed to an awards show where Billie Eilish earned 30 seconds to express her support for immigrants, Bove attended a political rally where the president declared immigrants as coming from “shithole countries,” and mused about running for a third term. As a symbolic expression of support, this is not in the same ballpark.
Conservatives at the Supreme Court fare even worse on the ethical ledger. Clarence Thomas accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in undisclosed luxury travel and gifts from a billionaire whose interests regularly align with cases before the Court? Sam Alito taking a private jet trip to a luxury fishing resort courtesy of a Republican megadonor who actually did have business before the Court? Alito got himself knighted by an organization headed up by arch-conservative Europeans.
It’s not even clear Blackburn is dumb enough to buy her own performative tantrum:
“Congressional Democrats and the legacy media have spent years smearing Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices as corrupt, partisan, and having engaged in conduct that violates the Court’s Code of Conduct,” Blackburn bemoaned.
“These public smear campaigns orchestrated by congressional Democrats and amplified by the mainstream media were baseless and a pathetic attempt to influence the decision-making process of the Court.”
And that’s the whole strategy. Deflect from the documented corruption piling up around conservatives by claiming the real bias is passively sitting in the audience while the woke mob awards Spanish-language music. If the standard is merely attending an event where other speakers engage in radical rhetoric, can we get some ethical complaints over being within a thousand yards of a Federalist Society conference? Because I don’t know if the GOP wants to pull that string.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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