Justice Alito doth protest too much
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took the unusual step late Tuesday of responding to questions about his travel with a billionaire who frequently has cases before the Supreme Court hours before an article detailing their ties had even been published.
In an extraordinary salvo in a favored forum, Justice Alito defended himself in a pre-emptive article in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal before the news organization ProPublica posted its account of a luxury fishing trip in 2008.
His response comes as the justices face mounting scrutiny over their ethical obligations to report gifts and to recuse themselves from cases involving their benefactors. The latest revelations are sure to intensify calls for the court to adopt more stringent ethics rules.
The justices have taken differing approaches to explaining their actions and attempting to protect their institution. Justice Clarence Thomas has been largely silent in the face of revelations of gifts from Harlan Crow, a wealthy Republican donor. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. turned down an invitation from Congress to testify about the court’s ethics practices and made vague statements about addressing them.
And Justice Alito has come out swinging.
The ProPublica article centered on a trip Justice Alito took to a remote part of Alaska, arriving on the private jet of Paul Singer, an immensely wealthy hedge fund manager and Republican donor. The flight would have cost more than $100,000 one way if the justice had chartered it himself, the outlet estimated, and his annual disclosures make no mention of the trip, in what many experts in legal ethics said was a violation of federal law. In the years afterward, Mr. Singer’s businesses were parties to a number of Supreme Court cases in which Justice Alito participated. [Continue reading…]