Gifts come with strings.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Clarence Thomas and his fellow U.S. Supreme Court justices will make $199,200 this year. He can afford to pay for his own tires. Yet a Los Angeles Times review of financial disclosure forms filed by justices over a six-year period reveals an unbounded willingness to accept lavish gifts. The court should accept the American Bar Association's recommendation and forbid federal judges from accepting expensive gifts from anyone except family members.

Thomas was the recipient of the most generosity by far. From 1998 through 2003 he reported receiving gifts worth $42,200, including a Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass valued at $19,000. Other gifts included a $5,000 check for a grand-nephew's education expenses, a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln and a $1,200 set of tires.

Thomas is in a league all his own. Sandra Day O'Connor received gifts valued at $5,025 over the six-year period. Most of O'Connor's gifts were commemorative knick-knacks such as a $375 engraved vase from the New Mexico Military Academy. Chief Justice William Rehnquist reported a single $5,000 gift from Fordham University. The others trailed far behind, and four of the justices - David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer - reported no gifts at all.

The disclosures are required by a 1978 federal ethics law. A later piece of legislation, the Ethics in Government Act of 1989, prohibits federal employees from accepting "anything of value" from people with whom they will be conducting official business. The federal judicial system adopted extremely lax rules implementing the 1989 law. Under the rules, anyone without business pending before the courts can make unlimited gifts to federal judges.

The potential for conflict is clear. Federal judges are appointed for life - and a gift-giver who doesn't have a case in federal court today may well be involved in litigation tomorrow. Thomas' most generous benefactor, for instance, is Harlan Crow, a Texas real-estate executive and Republican donor. Crow served as a board member of the Center for the Community Interest, a conservative advocacy group that has filed briefs with the Supreme Court.

Thomas can, of course, recuse himself from cases in which gift-givers such as Crow are involved. But there have been no such recusals on Thomas' part, and even if there had been, recusals are a weak response. The court should be able to count on all nine of its members applying their judgment to the court's caseload, without any appearance of a conflict of interest.

The federal judiciary should adopt a rule like the one that governs all employees of the Oregon judicial branch: "No employee shall solicit or accept any gift or favor from a person or organization that may benefit from the employee's official position with the Judicial Department or from a person or organization whose interests may be substantially affected by performance or nonperformance of the employee's official duty."

The word "may" is the key. The ban on gifts applies not only to those who have business before Oregon's courts, but to anyone who might have such business in the future - meaning everyone.

Public faith in the U.S. Supreme Court's impartiality is its most precious asset. The justices risk squandering that asset by keeping tip jars on their desks.