In February 2019, shortly after Brett M. Kavanaugh was confirmed as a justice of the United States Supreme Court despite serious allegations of sexual misconduct, numerous complaints against him were dismissed by a panel of judges without investigation, for two reasons.
First, although there is a binding code of ethics applicable to all lower federal court judges and all judges of the 50 states, the Supreme Court has never adopted such a code for itself. Thus, when Kavanaugh assumed his exalted new office, he was no longer subject to any promulgated ethical constraints.
