LET'S MAKE A DEAL:

Beyond the Duck Blind (NY Times, 3/15/04)

Supreme Court arguments are only six weeks away in the Sierra Club's challenge to the secrecy surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and the formulation of the Bush administration's energy policy. And Justice Antonin Scalia, Mr. Cheney's duck-hunting buddy, still stubbornly resists stepping out of the case. To protect the Supreme Court's integrity and legitimacy — and honor the rule of law — the final choice can no longer be left to Justice Scalia alone. Unless he suddenly reverses himself, the Supreme Court as a whole has a duty to intervene, much as it reviews the recusal decisions of lower-court judges. [...]

This problem is not Justice Scalia's alone. On the other side of the court's ideological spectrum, as another L.A. Times article noted, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg maintains involvement in a lecture series named for her that is co-sponsored by New York City's bar association and the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, which frequently participates in Supreme Court cases. Justice Ginsburg is relatively circumspect in her public remarks, but it's still unwise for her to retain an ongoing affiliation with such an active advocacy and litigation group.

That seems like a fair trade: Justice Scalia recuses himself from cases where the vice president is at issue and Justice Ginsburg recuses herself from those cases that involve women's issues.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 15, 2004 6:51 PM