The first lady, in what Vogue described as a powder pink “columnar” gown and white opera gloves, wore Dior Couture to Tuesday night’s state dinner in honor of Britain’s King Charles III.
Less remarked upon was the attire, much less the attendance, of six especially notable guests: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, each of whom was accompanied by their respective spouses. The Supreme Court contingent represented nearly 10% of the roughly 130 guests, which also included several Fox News journalists and executives, multiple Cabinet secretaries, some tech company titans and a handful of senior White House aides.
And while all six justices nominated by Republican presidents (three by Trump himself) attended the dinner, none of the three justices nominated by Democratic presidents were there, invited or not.
The presence of a Supreme Court justice at a state dinner is not in and of itself unusual. Former President Barack Obama fondly recalled in memorial remarks having welcomed then-Justice Antonin Scalia to a 2012 state dinner in honor of then-U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.
Nor are conservative-leaning justices the only ones to have enjoyed state dinners. Public reporting has indicated now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer attended a 2011 state dinner in honor of then-Chinese President Hu Jintao and a 2022 state dinner in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg also attended a state dinner during the Obama presidency in honor of then-Korean President Lee Myung-Bak.
But typically, a state dinner features a sole Supreme Court justice, as with Trump’s first dinner in 2018, at which Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife were guests.
The presence of the entire conservative wing of the court on Tuesday night — just hours before it released a 6-3 decision significantly weakening the Voting Rights Act, and on the eve of oral argument about the legality of the administration ending temporary protected status for Syrian and Haitian immigrants — struck some court observers as unusual.
Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor and author of the Supreme Court-focused Substack “One First,” told MS NOW that historically, it is not uncommon for justices to attend state functions, even in the middle of high-profile cases involving the president.
“The problem here,” Vladeck explained, “is the symbolism, that these six justices — and only these six — were there. It does nothing to disabuse the appearance that the court is playing partisan political favorites, an impression this court should be invested in avoiding.”
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There is also the question of whether attendance at a white-tie, White House function runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s own code of conduct, which the justices adopted in 2023 to counter the “misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”
That code of conduct contains various provisions that seem to advise against attending an event at the White House, especially en masse. Among them are the canons that a justice should “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary” and should not “knowingly convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the Justice.” The code of conduct also specifically warns against a justice’s participation in “extrajudicial activities” that “reflect adversely on the Justice’s impartiality.”
Of course, as critics were quick to point out, that code of conduct lacks any enforcement mechanism. Still, one has to wonder about the justices’ self-policing capacities and whether they, like many of us, lack sufficient self-awareness to recognize when their conduct falls short of their own rhetoric.
Take Roberts, whose latest year-end report on behalf of the court extolled the wisdom of our Constitution in “granting life tenure and salary protection to safeguard the independence of federal judges and ensure their ability to serve as a counter-majoritarian check on the political branches.” That setup, Roberts remarked, “now in place for 236 years, has served the country well.”
But when Roberts and the five other Republican-appointed justices dine at the White House as it rolls out its best china and linens for the king of England, are those justices practicing what they preach?
After all, it’s hard to be a counter-majoritarian check on political power when the majority of the court is indulging in presidential hospitality.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.