Scalia Visible As Ever for Cheney Argument
Tue Apr 27, 5:55 PM ET
By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) was every bit his usual blunt and confrontational self in Tuesday's Supreme Court argument involving his old friend and hunting partner, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites).
Outside interest groups want access to records of Cheney's energy task force and won a lower court order to force the White House to turn them over. Scalia made no secret of his view that the White House should be able to keep closed-door matters closed.
Cheney has not asserted executive privilege, a White House weapon that is seen as a last-ditch legal maneuver to avoid disclosure of sensitive material, and he hopes not to do so. Instead, the White House wants the high court to invalidate the lower court's order.
"I think executive privilege means whenever the president feels that he is threatened, he can simply refuse to comply with a court order," Scalia matter-of-factly told a lawyer for the Sierra Club (news - web sites).
He said nothing about his realtionship with Cheney, and neither did anyone else inside the courtroom.
Scalia went on a hunting trip with Cheney weeks after the court agreed to hear the appeal. Scores of newspaper editorials and commentaries alleged a conflict of interest and demanded that the justice disqualify himself from the case.
Instead, Scalia issued a lengthy defense of the January hunting trip and his own rectitude.
"If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Scalia wrote.
Scalia's role has almost overshadowed the legal issues before the high court and was the reason several spectators gave for standing in a long line awaiting courtroom seats.
"He has people who love him and people who hate him," said 23-year-old law student Peter Stockburger of Austin, Texas, who called the hunting trip a dumb move but not one that should keep the justice off the bench.
Martha Pieper, 58, of Chicago, a retired school counselor, said she has gotten angry reading the news accounts of the vacation and Scalia's response.
"I don't think you should sit on your good friend's case. That doesn't seem like justice to me," she said.
Scalia may or may not have heard the unidentified demonstrator who bellowed beneath the courthouse windows Tuesday morning. "Scalia! Recuse or resign!" the man yelled repeatedly. The man rode off on a bicycle before Supreme Court police could catch up.
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