From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

The Supreme Court issues a written code of conduct for itself, but will it quell critics of the justices and

President Trump proposes in a second term to launch a free online federal university.

Welcome I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We are joined today by my colleagues,

columnist Kim Strassal and editorial board member Manet-Uque Barua.

On Monday, somewhat out of the blue,

the Supreme Court issued an ethics code.

A bit of the statement that precedes it,

it says the undersigned justices,

and that includes all nine of them are promulgating

this code of conduct to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and

principles that guide the conduct of the members of this court.

They say that these are not mostly new rules,

and the court has long followed a set of principles,

common law ethics rules, or the equivalent.

But the absence of a written code has led in recent years the misunderstanding

that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves

as unrestricted by any ethics rules, and they are intending to dispel that

misunderstanding. Kim what do you make of this on the merits I guess what's in

this ethics code and then also the strategic decision here it seems to issue this amid a

campaign of political pressure against the Supreme Court. Well in terms of what's in it I

...