I got an absolutely livid phone call from my lawyer tonight. The poor barrister was so enraged that he skipped the background and announced that he had seen the first act of the Apocalypse and proof that America was about to become the Weimar Republic. What, you ask, was it that blew his gasket?
A hunting trip.
To be more specific: a hunting trip that violates the ethical codes of conduct for jurists in every court that pretends to be impartial. It was a hunting trip that in judicial backwaters like Los Angeles and New York would be strictly illegal. Only in the premier bastions of justice like Nigeria and provincial Mexico would such behavior be acceptable.
After he'd announced that, as a lawyer, he considered this ethical to-do the equivalent of treason against the judicial system he explained:
Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to take up Cheney's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.
[source: Pacifica Radio]
The story was apparently broken by that bastion of liberalism (heh) - the LA Times (registration required) - earlier this month:
One Case Scalia Should Skip (01/22/04)
Senators Inquire of Justices' Recusal Rules (01/23/04)
The Justice and the Veep: a Worrisome Friendship (01/26/04)
High Court Won't Review Scalia's Recusal Decision (01/27/04)
Federal law states that a justice "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned" but does not specify instances.
"When a sitting judge, poised to hear a case involving a particular litigant, goes on a vacation with that litigant, reasonable people will question whether that judge can be a fair and impartial adjudicator of that man's case or his opponent's claims," wrote Senators Leahy and Lieberman.
Justice Scalia returned a bristling memo: "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."
Chief Justice Rehnquist has so far defended Scalia's refusal to recuse himself. "Anyone at all is free to criticize the action of a justice -- as to recusal or as to the merits -- after the case has been decided. But I think that any suggestion by you or Senator Lieberman as to why a justice should recuse himself in a pending case is ill-considered," he wrote.
The Senators, for reasons not entirely clear, were not entirely satisfied by the Chief Justice's response. Senator Leahy replied: "Because Supreme Court decisions cannot be reviewed, waiting until after a case is decided needlessly risks an irreversible, tainted result and a loss of public confidence in our nation's highest court."