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There is no such code of conduct. A leftist justice could have an absolutely egregious conflict of interest, and the New York Times and Washington Post and NPR and CNN would carry water for them. Sure, conservative media would complain, but no one cares what they think anyway.
No, there is a code of conduct. A conservative judge could have an absolutely egregious conflict of interest and fox news, conservative talk radio and boomer facebook would carry water for them.
But nobody cares what the conservative media thinks. That's the essential asymmetry. A conservative judge could be pressured into recusing himself by the NYT/WP/CNN/NPR (directly or indirectly); a leftist judge cannot be pressured by the conservative media.
I think this is pretty transparently untrue, especially if you spend lots of time around retirees. There is a significant population who cares about OANN or Fox or whatever. Some of them are also wealthy, opinionated, and like those college-campus kids in that they have lots of time to spend on politics.
The much-maligned unelected judges are reasonably well insulated from the opinions of these voters. That cuts both ways, though, and I don’t see how conservative media is categorically different from its liberal or centrist counterparts.
It’s also rather hard to prove a negative. Did you have a leftist refusal to recuse in mind?
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Tens of millions of people care what conservative media thinks, and they vote accordingly. A conservative judge couldn't be pressured into recusing themselves by the media.
Too bad the country has hundreds of millions of people, and the ones in Washington DC (even the conservatives, by and large) aren't among those who care what conservative media thinks. Nobody who could put pressure on a Supreme Court justice cares what conservative media thinks. Sotomayor could participate in a case that her daughter was involved in and nobody in DC would blink an eye.
And the NYT have 10 million subscribers out of hundreds of millions of american citizens. Guess conservatives overestimate the impact of the Times as well. I doubt very much that conservatives in DC ignore what Hannity and the rest of them think, given how they stumble over themselves for endorsements. And Clarence Thomas could participate in a case that affects someone who owns his mother's house without any consequence whatsoever.
But they're the right 10 million, and further they influence a lot more than that.
Too bad they couldn't influence the election in 2016, for all their power. Or supreme court shenanigans. Or rampant gerrymandering. Or protect abortion rights. Turns out running the OWG and pulling all the strings in the American government isn't all it's cracked up to be.
That was their screwup. They brought up Trump as a bogeyman and ended up giving him publicity. Just because they screwed up doesn't mean they don't have power. (And of course the Supreme Court and abortion are downstream of that mistake.)
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