A senator from Texas, John Cornyn, joined by Delaware’s Chris Coons, introduced legislation this week to create an independent oversight body that would make the U.S. Judicial Council, an advisory group to the Supreme Court, records it public, including each judge’s annual salary and investments.
A similar bill was introduced in 2017 but did not pass. It was opposed by the Trump administration.
Mr. Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said: “The Judicial Council is not an independent body that does no political work. It is an advisory body to the Supreme Court but it has a financial stake in the outcomes of the cases it hears.
“With that fact and the lack of transparency, this commission which we are proposing would create the oversight to ensure that the Judicial Council operates independently and transparently, without undue political influence.”
Mr. Coons said the bill “would end the current under-regulated system of judicial secrecy by requiring regular, federal reports and electronic scans of government documents in order to provide the public more transparency than is currently possible.”
