Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, despairing of anything else to do with their time, held another hearing earlier this week, ostensibly on Supreme Court ethics. This came after a series of articles published by ProPublica which revealed, to the dismay of the Democratic Committee members, that Justice Clarence Thomas has friends who take him and his wife on vacation with them and are – gasp – wealthy.

This amounts to little more than a tiresome sideshow that has about as much to do with “ethics” as the Inflation Reduction Act had to do with reducing inflation.

No, what it is is simply the next battle in the ongoing war to remake – or return – the high court into something it was never intended to be, but masqueraded marvelously as for several decades; a backstop for societal changes that can’t find their way through the legislative process.

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The object of scorn, as it generally tends to be, is Justice Thomas, whom the American left has never forgiven for getting confirmed to the SCOTUS. The indignant animadversions emanating from the committee were focused on reports (rather thoroughly debunked by The Wall Street Journal) that Thomas, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Neil Gorsuch, failed to disclose some financial transactions and the acceptance of largesse from wealthy acquaintances.

Curiously, the indignation fails to apply to the liberal members of the court; for instance, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s far more extensive omissions that forced her to revise her own disclosures last year, or former Justice Stephen Breyer’s 225 subsidized trips he took between 2004 and 2018, to name just a couple. Even The New York Times was forced, in a lengthy, typically hand-wringing editorial, to point out, begrudgingly, that Thomas was, we guess, maybe, not the only culprit in this unconscionable breach in the walls fortifying democratic self-government.

Only, none of these justices did anything wrong. Judiciary Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are pushing for reforms, saying they simply want the Supreme Court Justices to be subject to the same rules that Congress and the executive branch are. This would be a mistake. The judiciary, by design and necessity, is something of a character of its own in the triumvirate of American government. It plays a markedly different role and does not have the power that legislators or executive agencies do. It does not – or at least was never intended to – make law or be a vector for societal change. Its job is to adjudicate disputes with reference to the positive law, subject to constitutional limitations. In other words, it’s there to call balls and strikes, as John Roberts said in his confirmation hearings to the consternation of then Sen. Joe Biden.

This is why Roberts declined, wisely, Durbin’s invitation to appear before the committee hearing Tuesday and be its star witness. Instead, Roberts pointed out to Sen. Durbin how rare it was for a chief justice to do such a thing, and why, helpfully supplying him a copy of the “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” that all nine justices signed.

What irritates the progressives is not the ethics of the Supreme Court justices, but their ideological utility. The headline of the Times editorial was wonderfully revealing, in a way I suspect the writer did not intend. It was titled, “The Ethics of Nine of the Most Powerful People in America.” One senses a touch of lament there. Under Roberts, the Supreme Court for the first time in decades has relinquished a great deal of the power it bestowed upon itself when it fancied itself not an adjudicating body but a creative one. Instead of creating new laws out of whole cloth to codify hitherto undiscovered rights, the Roberts Court has been satisfied with staying in its lane, correcting legal mistakes along the way. In doing so, it is no longer the vehicle for social innovation the left relied on for so many years. Checks and balances are impediments to revolutionary zeal.

It’s not as though the Senate doesn’t have anything else to do. The debt ceiling is looming, for instance, and the Republican House just sent over a bill that would authorize an increase in the debt limit for one year, coupled with some modest spending restraints. They might want to spend a moment or two on that issue, which is entirely in their purview.

The Senate should go back to just doing their jobs, and let the Court do its. If Sen. Durbin or Whitehouse need a primer on what the Constitution says those respective roles are, Justice Thomas is in town and would be happy to explain.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.