One Case Scalia Should Skip

The federal rules on how U.S. judges should behave are straightforward and reasonable: “A judge should not allow family, social or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment” or “permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.” Antonin Scalia scoffs at the idea that his hunting trip with friend Dick Cheney might bias the Supreme Court justice when he hears the vice president’s appeal to keep the details of his 2001 energy task-force meetings secret. Scalia may be able to separate friendship from his judicial duty to be fair and impartial. But the appearance of impropriety is no less important, and the duck shoot leaves a dreadful impression.

To be sure, no justice works in a vacuum in Washington; friendship with presidents helped many get appointed to the court. Such personal loyalties were as important in 1801 -- when John Adams named his longtime lieutenant, John Marshall, as chief justice -- as they are today. Once confirmed, justices serve for decades, deepening their network of rich, powerful friends over White House dinners and on private golf courses. There’s added skepticism, of course, about the independence of this court since its majority put George W. Bush in office with a controversial ruling in Bush vs. Gore.

Inevitably, justices’ friends or the presidents who put them on the bench are parties to a pending case. That’s why the highest court -- like every other -- calls on its members to recuse themselves in instances of conflict of interest or its appearance. Jurists recognize that taking this simple step is their vital responsibility to keep the courts’ integrity above reproach. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, for example, has withdrawn from business cases because she owns stock in a firm. Scalia is properly recusing himself from a Pledge of Allegiance case this term because he appeared to criticize a lower-court ruling on the issue in a speech last year.

His friendship should prompt him to do the same in the Cheney case. On Jan. 5, just three weeks after the court agreed to hear the suit, the two pals hunted ducks for a few days at a private Louisiana camp, as Times staffer David G. Savage reported. It’s worth noting that if Scalia, in misguided fashion, hears this case in April, he will be part of a court that decides whether Cheney violated an open-government law by meeting behind closed doors with lobbyists for the oil, gas, nuclear and coal industries while formulating national energy policy. Scalia bristles at the notion that “my impartiality could reasonably be questioned,” but he is smart enough to see that others could conclude otherwise. For the court’s credibility, he should duck out of this case.