The secretive Judicial Conference is tasked with self-governance. The group, led by the Supreme Court’s chief justice, has spent decades preserving perks, defending judges and thwarting outside oversight.

For decades, judges have relied on a select group to make sure the judiciary adheres to the highest ethical standards: themselves.

The Judicial Conference, a secretive, century-old council of federal judges led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, oversees the ethics and financial disclosures for more than 1,700 federal judges, including the nine justices of the high court. Those financial disclosures, submitted yearly as a list of assets and gifts, are often the only window into whether judges with lifetime appointments have conflicts of interest as they rule on the country’s most consequential legal cases.