The Supreme Court is facing the most public scrutiny it has seen in decades, following revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas hid lavish gifts he received from a billionaire conservative donor revelations that in turn have snowballed into stories about other justices ethically dubious financial arrangements.

In response, Democrats in Congress, led by Senate judiciary committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have sent letters to Chief Justice John Roberts politely requesting that he appear before a committee (or send another justice in his stead), and asked for answers on a range of ethics-related questions. Roberts has largely rebuffed Congress with separation-of-powers claims, saying the court will continue to police itself.

Late Monday afternoon, Roberts provided a brief reply to questions Durbin posed about the courts lack of a binding ethics code after the chief justice refused to testify.

A Senate judiciary committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform is set for Tuesday. But it will be only the second hearing Congress has held over the past two years on the subject, even as a steady flood of corruption scandals and ethical lapses have emerged from the court.

The slow movement by Democrats on Capitol Hill raises questions about whether they actually want to challenge the courts power grabs and ethical failures, even as public opinion on the court and its decisions plummets.

The Senate Judiciary Committees scheduled hearing is a step in this direction, but we need to see more consistent oversight and strong action to [rein] in the Courts emperor has no clothes approach to ethics and address the Courts legitimacy crisis, Russ Feingold, president of the American Constitution Society and a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who served on the judiciary committee, said in a statement to HuffPost.