The ethics complaints against Kavanaugh continue to follow him – here's what that could mean

Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in the Supreme Court on Saturday, but that does not mean that the controversy around his confirmation disappears. The ethics complaints filed against Kavanaugh in September and October will continue to follow him, but are dismissed from Washington, DC, according to a letter from Chief Justice John Roberts.

About fifteen complaints of judicial misconduct were initially filed in the Circuit Court of Appeals, where Kavanaugh had served as a judge before being confirmed. Chief Justice Merrick Garland, a District Court Judge and a former Supreme Court candidate for President Obama, has declined to deal with complaints. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, of her seat, said last week that the complaints "do not concern any behavior that Judge Kavanaugh would have engaged as a judge". Instead, she said, they focus on the public statements that he made while he was a candidate for the Supreme Court.

According to Politico, under federal law, anyone can file a complaint against a federal judge in his district. If the complaint is deemed credible, a special committee then reviews the allegations. The Washington Post reported last week that the allegations in these 15 complaints had already been widely discussed in public – in particular that Kavanaugh would have been dishonest in his testimony before the Senate and had exhibited a temperament that was not suitable for a judge of the Supreme Court at the follow-up hearing. Kavanaugh vowed to give honest testimony before his hearings and Bustle contacted his lawyer to get his comments on the charges.

According to Buzzfeed News, Henderson asked Judge Roberts to transfer the complaints to another circuit, a standard procedure to avoid conflicts of interest. According to Roberts' letter, he seems to have chosen to transfer them to the 10th circuit, based in Denver and serving six Western American states.

The situation is unusual and the experts do not know what will happen with the outstanding complaints. Buzzfeed News reported that, in the past, complaints against retired or resigning judges have been rejected as they are no longer relevant. However, there is no precedent for complaints against a judge who resigns to join the highest court in the country. In fact, the Supreme Court is not even included in the same complaint process as that applied to lower court judges.

"If Judge Roberts relies on the complaints, they will reside in some sort of purgatory and will never be judged," said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the University of New York Law School. The post office last week before Roberts' transfer request. "This is not how the rules provided that the process would work." according to The post office, a Supreme Court candidate has never been confirmed, while another justice of the peace recommends that an investigation be conducted into the ethical issues raised against him.

Complaints may not produce results if they are unsustainable. The judges of the 10th Circuit Federal Court could also decide that they do not have jurisdiction to rule on the allegations made against a Supreme Court judge. But in an interview with PBS News Hour, Gillers disagreed on this potential outcome, saying the complaints "allege misconduct that occurred while Kavanaugh was on the DC circuit and was subject to the code of conduct of US judges because it is now on another federal court ".