Litigation

Ethics Attack on High Court Judges ?Dangerous??

By Peter Hardin

Critics have gone far in recent months to challenge the ethics and impartiality of several conservative Supreme Court justices. Now a political journal tries to give context to the charges.

The attacks on Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and to a lesser extent Samuel Alito “represent the most concerted attack on a bloc of justices since the early 1970s, when conservatives waged a long campaign against the liberal justices of the Warren court, most notably Justices William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas,” a Politico article reports.

Across the political spectrum there are legal scholars and court watchers who dismiss the critics’ campaign “as a stretch, at best, and dangerous, at worst,” the article says.

Readers of Gavel Grab have seen reports about numerous lines of attack. They include the watchdog group Common Cause questioning whether Justices Thomas and Scalia should have stepped aside from hearing the Citizens United case, to questions raised about the pair’s reported attendance at one or more retreats sponsored by Koch Industries. It’s a major player in conservative politics and a beneficiary of Citizens United.

But Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice was unequivocal in branding as “meritless” allegations  that the two justices were biased due to their affiliation with the Koch retreat.

“We see no basis for the accusations that the justices? decisions are based on anything but the merits,” Waldman said.  He cautioned that ?people should think very hard before asking prosecutors to investigate judges just because they dislike the decisions they make.?

The article explores possible political strategies that may be at play in the campaign, especially at a time when key Obama administration initiatives appear to be heading for a train wreck with the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court.

“In this [modern] context, it?s not so surprising that attacks on the justices would veer from the purely ideological into attempts to delegitimize the justices personally, to some extent,? said Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor who clerked for Justice David Souter before the jurist retired.

Both the Brennan Center and Common Cause are partners of Justice at Stake.

Full post as published by The Gavel on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).