By Mike Sacks, From Legal Times,

House Transparency Caucus seeks SCOTUS finance sunshine.

A group of transparency advocates and government watchdogs on Wednesday called for the U.S. Supreme Court to provide greater access to the justices’ financial disclosure forms, the latest of which are set to be released June 30.

The House Transparency Caucus hosted a briefing on financial transparency at the high court. Reps. Darrell Issa, R-California, and Mike Quigley, R-Illinois, led the event.

“Lifetime appointments, the lack of any accountability or recourse for self-dealing makes it essential that we truly understand what conflicts may exist in [the justices’] financial or, in fact, their personal lives,” Issa said. “They have the ultimate responsibility for determining the rules that they live by and that the lower courts will live by unless Congress intervenes.”

Quigley emphasized the responsibility that comes with the court’s wide impact on American governance. “Five people in robes can overturn a law that 435 members of the house, 100 senators and the president of the United States agree on. That’s extraordinary power,” he said.

“With the greatest respect to the justices, they seem to forget one simple thing. This is not their Supreme Court. They are not the supreme court. They happen to be, like I am, a temporary member. I am a temporary member of Congress, I am a custodian. And with that comes a responsibility that they must share to be as accountable as they possibly can to the American public,” Quigley said. Americans “have a right to know what [the justices’] situation is financially, who they’re obligated to, to at least the same level that the other branches of government address.”

The panelists laid out the nuts and bolts of what Supreme Court financial reporting looks like, and how they think it should be improved.

“Judicial filings are still living in the 20th century,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics’ executive director. “You have to fill out a form and fax it to the administrative office, at which point they will either mail the results to you or you can set up an appointment to come by and physically pick them up. And, again, bring a check, because you have to pay 20 cents a page.”

Katie Townsend, the litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 does apply to the Supreme Court the same way that it applies to other branches of government.” She suggested that the judiciary can improve its compliance policies with online disclosure, reporting uniformity, and releasing the information before the court adjourns for the summer so journalists can provide fuller context for the big decisions that come down in June.

A Center for Public Integrity report last year on appeals court financial disclosure forms revealed “26 cases in which judges were ruling on cases in which they or their spouses owned stock, which is not allowed under the rules of the federal judiciary,” Kytja Weir, a project manager and reporter for the center, said on Wednesday. The investigation led to five of those cases being reopened and reheard with new judges. The NLJ reported on appellate judges’ travel and their connections to law firms and law schools in a special report last year.

The Supreme Court has made no moves to change its status quo and are “pretty jealous about protecting their prerogatives, and their independence, and their security,” said Noah Bookbinder, the executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Bookbinder said there’s “some hope that these changes can be made by pressure rather than by legislation.”

IMAGE: Darrell Issa (R-CA), Co-Chair of the Transparency Caucus, during a briefing titled “Financial Transparency and the Supreme Court.” June 3, 2015.   Photo: Mike Sacks/NLJ

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202728246399/Justices-Urged-to-Provide-More-Access-to-Financial-Disclosures#ixzz3c6KdaOko