Christiane: And next to the U.S. Supreme Court which is facing an ethical dilemma.

Lawyers and lawmakers are calling for the high court to adopt an ethics code of conduct, after Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were accused of violations.

Chief Justice John Roberts declines to discuss the matter with congress, now the independent Senator Angus King has introduced new, bipartisan legislation: The Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act.

If it is passed, it will require the high Court to establish its own ethics code in line with other federal judges.

To discuss this new bill and the senator's attempt to restore trust in the institution, he is talking to Walter Isaacson.

Walter: Thank you.

Senator Angus King, welcome back to the show.

Sen. King: Great to be with you, Walter.

Look forward to talking about some pretty serious issues this week.

Walter: Including the Supreme Court, because you've always been at the forefront of trying to restore trust in institutions.

But we've been hit with some stories recently about the Supreme Court.

That was the case of justice Clarence Thomas accepting luxury vacations from the billionaire Harlan Crow who bought the justice's mother's house and renovated it while she was still there.

Likewise, we have had a story about Neil Gorsuch, who didn't reveal the name of the person who bought a $1.8 million piece of property, was somebody who was the head of a firm with cases in front of the Court.

Why do these types of stories matter?

Sen. King: They matter, Walter, because the Supreme Court does not have a police force or an army.

The whole structure of the Supreme Court depends on public trust, on its moral authority, if you will.

Stories like what we've seen in the last couple of weeks undermine that public trust.

And in fact, the recent polls indicate that the confidence in the Supreme Court is at the lowest level I think in history, certainly in recent history.

So what Lisa Murkowski and I are trying to do, and we will talk about our bill, it is a Supreme Court bill.

We are basically saying, adopt a code of ethics because that is what is needed to reassure the public after these recent revelations.

I mean, one of the things about these regulations were that they weren't even reported.

Supreme Court justices do have financial reporting requirements, and they didn't report these vacations and bought houses and those kinds of things, so...

It is all about public confidence and it is a wider problem, as you know, in our government generally.

Democracy rests on trust.

This is one effort to shore up the trust in one of our most important institutions.

Walter: You say that you and Senator Murkowski, a Republican senator, are working on a code of ethics, a code of conduct bill that would ask the Supreme Court to do these things.

What exactly is in that bill?

Sen. King: It's really simple.

It's a three-page bill.

We don't write the code of conduct, we don't think that's appropriate for the congress, basically what all our bills says is, Take the next year.

Write your own code of conduct.

Make it public, and then establish someone within the court system whose job it is to oversee the implementation of that code.

By the way, Walter, every judge in America is subject to a traditional code of conduct, except the nine justices of the Supreme Court.

What we are talking about here is not very radical.

This is not congress saying what the rules should be.

We are saying, "You make your own rules, and then be public and transparent about it."

In our bill we say a year, but it could be done in the weekend because there is already a judicial code of conduct that governs every other judge in the country.

All they have to do is add "And the U.S. Supreme Court."

It's ridiculous.

I don't know how many judges we have in the country, 15,000?

All but nine are subject to a judicial code of conduct.

And those nine have lifetime jobs, and some of the most important decisions in terms of power over American lives, it just seems to me common sense.

Walter: Even if it is common sense and it seems to make sense, what right do you have to tell them to do it?

You are a separate branch of government.

We keep the separation of powers important.

Why should congress have the right to tell the Supreme Court what to do?

Sen. King: I think it's a good constitutional question.

Justice Roberts declined to appear before the judicial committee.

I understand that, I think there are separation of power issues here.

I understand that under the Constitution, I believe it is article three, a Supreme Court is established.

I think the congress does have the power not to necessarily say what the standard should be, but simply say to the Court, you should do this.

They are to do it themselves.

They are to take the hint.

There is no question that they have the power to do it themselves.

We shouldn't have an act of congress to require them to do it.

But so far, they have not taken that step, they have resisted it.

Justice Roberts sent a long letter to Dick Durbin and the judiciary committee and said, "We consult with people and we will follow the substance of the rules."

That's not good enough.

We're trying to help them to help themselves.

This is all about preserving the authority and the credibility of the Supreme Court.

So I believe that congress does have that power.

But beyond that, I wish in the next two weeks, Justice Roberts would say "You can put your legislation away, we will adopt a code of conduct."

Walter: In a letter to senator Dick Durbin, who tried to get him to testify before the judiciary committee, Justice Thomas said, "We already have a statement on ethics and principles and practices."

It was a couple of pages, I read it.

Why isn't that enough?

Sen. King: It doesn't really set forth any standards.

To me the key words in that were "We will follow the substance of the standards."

That is not good enough.

Following the substance.

How about following the rules?

Tell us what the rules are.

It is hard to tell whether conduct is appropriate if you don't have any standard for defining what is appropriate.

Justice Thomas, for example, justified his failure to report a $500,000 vacation by saying, "I consulted people and they said it was ok, and it is ok to take hospitality."

It just isn't clear.

For example, in the main judicial code of conduct if there is an exception for hospitality, but you know what it says?

"Ordinary hospitality."

That is a dinner now and then.

Maybe a round of golf.

It's not a private jet and a yacht in the Philippines.

Nobody would define that as "ordinary hospitality."

That is what I mean.

Let's have a code of judicial conduct.

I have been surprised for many years, that this did not exist.

I keep going back to this point -- the whole project that Lisa Murkowski and I are engaged in is on behalf of the Supreme Court.

We are merely saying, Here is something you really should do in order to reestablish your credibility.

I can't believe that John Roberts wants his legacy on the Supreme Court to be a catastrophic decline in public confidence in his very important institution.

Walter: Say your bill passes, and say the Supreme Court says "You don't have the right to tell us what to do."

What happens then?

Sen. King: There would be a case and the Supreme Court would decide it.

They are the Supreme Court, they interpret the law and the constitution, and I suppose they could have that result.

It would be an interesting result where they could make themselves exempt, but if they did that, it would be one more blow.

This is Shakespeare.

"Methinks he doth protest too much."

If you are following some kind of vague standards that are undefined, then why are you resisting so stoutly, doing something that again, applies to every judge in America, including every federal judge in America?

It doesn't make any sense to me that they are resisting so strongly, something that I think ordinary citizens would say, "Huh?

Why aren't they doing this?"

Walter: Let me ask you about another story involving the Supreme Court, and that is Justice Alito saying to The Wall Street Journal that he thinks he knows who the leaker is of the Dobbs case draft that caused such controversy.

Tell me how that plays into undermining the credibility of the Court.

Sen. King: I was a little bit surprised.

The Court did an investigation and they believe the announcement was, "We couldn't find the leaker, we couldn't get to the bottom of it."

If he knows something, he should share that with the chief.

But, you know, there are other issues that have not gotten the level of publicity that we have had recently about people who are contributors to -- I think it's called the Supreme Court Historical Association, and they have special access to the judges' dinners, dinners at people's homes.

Walter: Doesn't the senate do that as well?

Sen. King: Yeah.

Number one, we don't have lifetime appointments.

We have to answer to the voters every two years in the house and every six years in the senate.

I am not saying judges can't have a social life, but I am saying that the heart of the judicial canon of ethics, I remember learning this in law school, is that judges must avoid impropriety and they should avoid the appearance of impropriety, avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Why?

Because again, to go back, the Court's authority rests upon public trust.

If people think the courts are rigged or they are not fair or subject to influence by special interests, then they're going to say, Why do we have to listen to these people?

Why do we have to abide by their rulings?

President Jackson famously said "If the Supreme Court wants to enforce its order, it can have its own army" or something along those lines.

You are a historian, you know better than me.

The point is, it is the moral authority of the Court that is so important.

We live in an age of declining confidence in public institutions.

And here I am, a member of congress, which has a pretty low approval rating itself.

But at least we are answerable to the people.

This is more important.

You have got nine people who have enormous power over America's lives.

Lifetime appointments.

Now I will go back to Madison.

Or even go back further to the Romans, you know the quote -- Quis custodis, ipso custodia?"

"Who will guard the guardians?"

He said, if men were angels, no government would be necessary.

If angels were to staff the government over men, no checks and balances would be necessary.

However, first we have to empower the government to control the governed, and then oblige the government to control itself.

That is really what we're talking about here, Who will guard the guardians?

All we are talking about just, tell us what your rules are and be transparent about it to restore confidence this critically important institution.

Walter: You are an independent, but you caucus as a democrat.

The cosponsor of your bill is Lisa Murkowski, a Republican.

It gives the veneer at least of bipartisanship, that it seems that even your proposals have run into very partisan opposition, almost all the Republicans other than Senator Murkowski and a few others, have slammed it.

Sen. King: I have not given up.

Lisa and I have not done our missionary work yet.

Mitch McConnell went to the floor I think the morning -- he was not talking about our bill, he was basically saying, we will not do anything on Supreme Court ethics.

That is an attack on the Court.

This week there was a hearing at the judiciary committee on this issue, and the Republicans took the position that it's an attack on the Court and an attack on Justice Thomas.

That is not true.

Our bill is forward-looking.

It's not retroactive.

It doesn't impose any penalties.

It basically just says, a year from now, Supreme Court, tell us what the rules are going to be.

Make them public and then we will move on as cases arise.

But you are right, the Republicans have decided that this is just unacceptable.

Interesting, Dick Durbin, chair of the judiciary committee, wrote a letter to the chief justice on this issue in February of 2012, when Barack Obama was president.

So it is not as if this issue has just arisen because of the ideological nature of the Court, it has arisen, I think we have to be honest with one another, because of these, I believe, outrageous revelations that have come out over the last couple weeks.

That highlighted the issue.

But this has been an issue that has been around for a long time.

Again, this would go away if the Supreme Court did for itself what we are proposing.

Our proposal could not be more moderate, if you will, in that we are not telling them what the rules should be.

"You make your rules and tell us what they are."

Walter: I really don't get this.

Why couldn't you enlist a broad spectrum, ideologically, in favor of something like that?

Sen. King: Well, as I say, I have not given up.

The Republican caucus have decided that this will be a stand your ground issue.

Lisa Murkowski is a person of enormous integrity and common sense, and she said, "This makes sense.

Let's do it."

I plan to talk to some of my colleagues, but sometimes we are talking peer pressure.

As I say -- I can't remember the morning, I think it was last Wednesday -- Mitch McConnell said on the floor, "We are not going to do this."

So it became a caucus issue.

I think it ought to be a bipartisan issue, it ought to be a 99-1 issue, it is so straightforward and consistent again, with the rules that apply to every other judge in the country, state and federal.

Walter: Tell me, why are we having such problems these days creating bipartisan consensus in the senate and other places?

Sen. King: I am going to surprise you and disagree a little bit.

There is a lot more bipartisanship around here than people think.

Number 1, we don't hate each other.

If you're having trouble sleeping, go to C-Span and watch a vote on C-Span2 in the senate.

What people see is -- I tell people in Maine, it looks like the dump on Saturday morning.

You will see people milling around and chatting, almost always in a bipartisan way.

You will see John Cornyn talking to Tim Kaine, or Gary Peters over there talking to Ron Johnson about homeland security.

You will see these little groups moving around.

The idea -- you hear the word "toxic," that we don't like each other.

That just is not true.

Number two, in the past two years we have passed seven or eight major bills, five of which were entirely bipartisan.

The infrastructure bill.

The veterans pact act.

The chips and science act.

The budget in december.

The media only likes to report the conflict.

You never read a headline that says "5,000 planes landed safely yesterday."

The story is about the plane that didn't land safely.

So I don't want to overstate it, it's not like we are all linking arms around here, but it is better than people think, and I hope that that can provide a basis for bipartisan work in the kinds of areas that we are talking about.

That is the way it ought to work.

Walter: Senator Angus King, thank you so much for joining us.

Sen. King: Thank you, Walter.

Great to be with you.