Can you believe this? Note who paid for the trip, in the last paragraph.
Justice's ties to Cheney questioned
David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
Published January 18, 2004 CHEN18
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of a week duck hunting at a private camp in Louisiana just three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.
Although Scalia and Cheney are longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.
But Scalia rejected that concern, saying, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."
For nearly three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal whether he met with energy industry officials when he was formulating the president's energy policy.
A lower court ruled that Cheney must turn over documents detailing who met with his task force, but on Dec. 15 the Supreme Court announced it would hear his appeal. In a written response to an inquiry about the hunting trip, Scalia said that "Cheney was indeed among the party of about nine who hunted from the camp. Social contacts with high-level executive officials [including Cabinet officers] have never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which those people are involved in their official capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity. For example, Supreme Court justices are regularly invited to dine at the White House, whether or not a suit seeking to compel or prevent certain presidential action is pending."
Cheney does not face a personal penalty in the pending lawsuits. He could not be forced to pay damages, for example.
His office referred questions about the propriety of the social encounters to the court.
New York University law Prof. Stephen Gillers said Scalia should have skipped the hunting trip with Cheney this year.
"A judge may have a friendship with a lawyer, and that's fine. But if the lawyer has a case before the judge, they don't socialize until it's over," said Gillers, an expert on legal ethics.
Cheney and Scalia arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp. an oil services company in Amelia, La. |
