Two weeks ago, administration critics and sensible people everywhere howled upon learning that Dick Cheney joined Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for a hunting trip at a private camp in Louisiana, just a few weeks before Scalia and the rest of the high court will hear Cheney’s appeal of lawsuits challenging the secrecy of his office’s energy task force.
Dems noted the obvious impropriety of a judge hanging out with a defendant before a trial, but Scalia refused to even consider recusing himself from Cheney’s case. Several Dem senators even wrote to Rehnquist to ask him to intervene in the matter, but he declined, saying the decision was Scalia’s to make.
The pressure on Scalia will be turned up a notch in light of new details discovered by the LA Times. The newspaper reported that Scalia and Cheney didn’t just meet up in Louisiana for a hunting excursion, but that Scalia was an “official guest” of Cheney’s on a government jet.
In other words, it’s not as if Cheney and Scalia just happened to independently choose the same vacation spot at the same time. In fact, the details paint an almost comical picture. A powerful defendant, just weeks before his case is heard in court, invites an already-sympathetic judge to join him on his luxurious jet for a vacation at a secluded retreat. The judge then insists there’s no reason to question his impartiality.
The Times article also raises the serious concern that Cheney, in effect, gave Scalia something of value, a definite no-no for judicial ethics.
“In my view, this further ratchets it up. If the vice president is the source of generosity, it means Scalia is accepting a gift of some value from a litigant in a case before him,” NYU law professor Stephen Gillers told the Times. “It is not just a trip with a litigant. It’s a trip at the expense of the litigant. This is an easy case for stepping aside.”
One of the plaintiffs, the Sierra Club, indicated that its lawyers are considering a motion to ask Scalia to withdraw from the case.
“On the face of it, that makes things worse,” said the Sierra Club’s David Bookbinder, referring to the justice’s trip aboard an Air Force jet. “The fact that the vice president is his host and, in effect, is paying for his vacation puts it in an even more awkward light for Justice Scalia.”
We’ll see what happens, but I suspect Scalia just won’t care. He’s ignored principle and concerns over judicial ethics before, and something tells me he won’t hesitate to do it again.