This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Veteran U.S. Supreme Court analyst Ruth Marcus, associate editor of the Washington Post, has gone on record suggesting what the Court should do to improve its ethics record.

Her ideas, summarized below, are worth considering.

And, she advocates that Chief Justice John Roberts, inasmuch as this is “his court,” should take initiative to impose ethical guidelines.  The very reputation of the court, Marcus contends, is at stake.

Here is how Marcus started a recent column:

“Keith Watts keeps a framed copy of his decade-old rejection letter from John G. Roberts Jr.  The chief justice wouldn’t be able to speak to Watts’s group of corporate lawyers, Roberts told the California attorney.  And, Roberts said, he was also returning the first-edition copy of a 19th-century legal treatise Watts had sent along with the invitation.

“’It is a wonderful volume, but I am afraid that ethical constraints prevent me from accepting it,’ Roberts wrote in the January 2013 letter, which Watts shared with me.

“How quaint.  Imagine what the fastidious Chief Justice thinks — imagine how he cringes — on learning about the gusher of benefits that Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow bestowed on Justice Clarence Thomas.  All-expenses-paid yacht trips.  Private jet flights.  Private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew.

“The purchase of his mother’s house.  Where Roberts felt obliged to return Watts’s book, Thomas had no evident compunction about accepting a Frederick Douglass Bible valued at $19,000 from Crow.”

Do you have a lot of friends who give you $19,000 gifts?

All this amounts to a headache of migraine proportions for the court, and therefore for Roberts.

The Post included this quote:

“’I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,’ Roberts said during remarks at the American Law Institute last month.  ‘We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment, and I am confident that there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separation of powers.’”

What’s a chief justice to do?  Roberts has been known to deflect such questions with the observation that he is merely one of nine.  But, Marcus contends this understates the authority he could exert, if he so chose to do so.

So, she summarizes what she says is “a modest proposal” for the Chief Justice:  “As unnatural an act as it would be for the conflict-averse Roberts, he needs to tap his inner LBJ.  Announcement first, agreement later.”

• Roberts should simply tell his colleagues that he plans to announce that the court will officially subject itself to the ethical standards that are binding on other federal judges.  Period.
• He should further name a committee — perhaps of retired judges — to consider what adjustments need to be made to tailor the ethics rules to the particular needs of the high court.  For instance, how to deal with recusals, since justices — unlike their lower court brethren — can’t be replaced if they recuse themselves from hearing a case, and therefore might be more reluctant to step aside.
• Again, the LBJ model:  Roberts should privately tell Thomas that he plans to announce he is asking the Judicial Conference of the United States, which reviews the justices’ disclosure forms, to examine Thomas’s past compliance.  But, Roberts should say, this request would be much better coming from Thomas himself — a voluntary move to assure the public that the justice has followed the law.

Marcus conclusion:   “The court’s approval bounces around.  But this is a perilous trajectory.  It is happening on the chief’s watch.  That makes it his problem to address, if not to solve.”

As a member of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, I deal with ethics issues all the time as they apply to those in public life in Oregon.  With only that context, it continues to surprise me that the U.S. Supreme Court has not been more steadfast in signing up for its own ethics rules in an open, transparent fashion.

If it did so now, I agree with Marcus that it would upgrade the perception of the highest court in the land.