The Supreme Court’s code of conduct is a good first step

FOR 50 years all but nine of America’s around 2,000 federal judges have been subject to a code of conduct laying out ethical guidelines for jurists’ behaviour on and off the bench. On November 13th the exceptions—the justices of the Supreme Court—announced that they had decided to join their lower-court peers.The new rules do not arrive in a vacuum. Calls for the court to clean up its act have followed investigative reports from and other publications uncovering several justices’ ethical lapses. Justice Clarence Thomas, the main target of those articles, failed to declare decades of luxury travel on the tab of Harlan Crow, a generous donor to conservative causes. Mr Crow also bought a home Justice Thomas owned in Georgia and footed the tuition bill for his grandnephew’s private school.