As the eight-member Supreme Court starts its new term, CNN Legal Analyst Joan Biskupic explains the often overlooked financial disclosures that can explain why a particular justice may choose to recuse himself or herself from a case. When a justice holds stock in a company and recuses himself, it is often months before the public knows why he didn't participate in arguments. But there is little official oversight of the judicial branch where federal judges are appointed for life. Only outside advocacy groups are unofficially policing the judiciary. "It's very hard to get rid" of a federal judge, Biskupic says.
Web Video: Policing the Supreme Court: Conflicts of interest and financial disclosures
Oct. 03, 2016 AT 12:58 p.m. EDT
TRANSCRIPT
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
JOAN BISKUPIC: On these financial disclosure forms, not only do they show trips taken and money made off of book contracts, but also stock holdings. So that gives us a clue when a justice might be about to recuse from a case, step down, or it might explain once a justice isn't in a case. Many people don't know that when a justice doesn't sit on a particular dispute, he or she doesn't say why usually. And we have to go back to these financial disclosure forms and take a look. For example, Justice Breyer on his form it showed that he had stock in Cisco Systems, and he didn't participate in a dispute involving the company. So that's another way we can finally see a little bit of explanation for why a justice may be in or out of a case.
The justices have a lot of leeway in terms of how they fill these things out and how they make them available. They do come very late in the year. They're not done electronically. We get them on paper, and there's really no actual oversight of the judicial branch except the judicial branch.
Some people have asked the question, 'Who polices the judiciary?' And there are some outside advocacy groups that will try to call attention to the justices' trips, wondering who the private funders are or they'll look at potential conflicts of interest with stock holdings. Remember the justices who sit on the Supreme Court and judges who sit throughout the federal courts in the United States are appointed for life. It's very hard to get rid of one. There are proceedings within the judiciary if someone has violated any kind of ethical standard. So generally speaking these forms which are sort of opaque in and of themselves don't get a lot of public attention.
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