Editorial: Throwing ethics out the window

Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2004 | 8:55 a.m.

Early last month Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joined Vice President Dick Cheney on a duck hunting trip in Louisiana, but this was not your usual outing. They flew together from Washington to Louisiana, with Scalia as Cheney's guest aboard a government jet that doubles as Air Force Two. After landing in Patterson, La., two military helicopters hovered in the distance as a heavily guarded motorcade took them to a private hunting camp. It must have been quite a sight, but interestingly enough there were no photographers there to capture the moment. As the Los Angeles Times has reported, both the local sheriff and the operator of a flying center at the airport where the jet landed said that there were orders prohibiting pictures from being taken of those who left the plane.

It's easy to understand why the camera-shy Cheney didn't want the public to see how chummy he was with Scalia. Cheney, you see, has a case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving, of all things, government secrecy. Two years ago the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch sued Cheney, the former oil industry executive, seeking the release of records from an energy task force he once headed for the Bush administration. A federal judge did the right thing in ordering Cheney to turn over the records, which would provide some answers as to what went on in the task force's secret meetings, but the vice president appealed the decision. On Dec. 15 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, a couple of weeks prior to the Cheney-Scalia hunting trip, which was held -- and we're not kidding -- on land owned by an oil industry executive.

It doesn't take a legal ethics expert to know that Scalia should recuse himself from the case. Scalia refuses to do so, however, saying he doesn't see a reason why he should withdraw. It's almost as if Scalia believes he is above the law and, in a perverse way, he is. There really is no higher authority that someone could appeal to that could prevent Scalia from sitting on the case. So, unless Scalia's conscience gets the better of him, the public will rightly view the outcome of any Supreme Court decision favoring Cheney as a travesty.