• Justice in a blind Justice in a blind Justice Antonin Scalia mischaracterized the dispute over Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force in order to justify his refusal to withdraw from the Supreme Court case involving his friend.
• Justice in a blind
Justice in a blind
Justice Antonin Scalia mischaracterized the dispute over Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force in order to justify his refusal to withdraw from the Supreme Court case involving his friend.
Justice Scalia maintained last week that “nothing” the court could say in the Cheney case “will have any bearing upon the reputation and integrity of Richard Cheney.” That’s simply not true. Mr. Cheney put his reputation and integrity at stake by involving energy executives in revisions of the nation’s energy policy and then fighting for years to keep the details secret.
Justice Scalia acknowledged that there “could be political consequences from disclosure of the fact (if it be so) that the Vice President favored business interests, and especially a sector of business with which he was formerly connected.” This has nothing to do with reputation or integrity?
In fact, Justice Scalia is drawing a distinction without a difference, and it amounts to legal mumbo jumbo.
Justice Scalia’s argument is that the Sierra Club’s challenge to the secrecy of the records is just a “run-of-the-mill suit” against the head of a federal agency – not a suit affecting the individual. For that reason, his friendship with the individual is irrelevant, he maintained.
Historically, Justice Scalia has a strong argument in favor of justices deciding cases involving officials who are their friends. Justice Robert Jackson socialized with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and also voted to uphold controversial elements of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Chief Justice Frederick M. Vinson played poker with President Harry S Truman, even as his court considered Mr. Truman’s seizure of the nation’s steel mills. And Justice Byron R. White skied with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who brought big cases before the court.
But times have changed. The ethical bar is higher.
Justice Scalia is fond of saying that judges should rely on the plain meaning of the law. Well, the law plainly says Justice Scalia must recuse himself if his “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
It certainly is reasonable to question whether Justice Scalia might favor his good friend in a tough political spot. It is reasonable to question Justice Scalia’s impartiality, given the recent duck hunting trip that Mr. Cheney took, at the justice’s invitation, with Justice Scalia and members of his family. And it is all the more reasonable to question his impartiality, considering that the host for this hunting trip provides services and rents equipment to energy companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overall, Justice Scalia’s stubborn defense of his decision to participate in the case is itself evidence that he is already blind to the requirements of justice.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
