Judicial Ethics & Kid Galahad
A venial, not mortal, sin?
A little tarnish on Kid Galahad's judicial in armor?
Yesterday, Judge Roberts fended off questions quoting guidelines for judicial ethics; today the L.A. Times quotes the judicial ethics he ignored when the Administration interviewed him as a potential SCOTUS nominee. The commentators say he should have recused himself in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld in which the President was a defendant.
Click the title, for the LA Times link. Judicial ethics can be found in the link below.
Judicial Ethics: http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mcjc/canon_3.html
But as LNILR points out, he's not alone: "neither of those legal constraints kept Justices Thomas and Scalia from making George Bush president in 2000. Thomas' wife worked on Bush's transition team (§ 455(b)(5)(iii)) and Scalia's son worked for one of the law firms representing Bush (albeit not directly involved; § 455(b)(5)(ii))." http://www.talkleft.com/
A little tarnish on Kid Galahad's judicial in armor?
Yesterday, Judge Roberts fended off questions quoting guidelines for judicial ethics; today the L.A. Times quotes the judicial ethics he ignored when the Administration interviewed him as a potential SCOTUS nominee. The commentators say he should have recused himself in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld in which the President was a defendant.
Click the title, for the LA Times link. Judicial ethics can be found in the link below.
Judicial Ethics: http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mcjc/canon_3.html
But as LNILR points out, he's not alone: "neither of those legal constraints kept Justices Thomas and Scalia from making George Bush president in 2000. Thomas' wife worked on Bush's transition team (§ 455(b)(5)(iii)) and Scalia's son worked for one of the law firms representing Bush (albeit not directly involved; § 455(b)(5)(ii))." http://www.talkleft.com/
posted by Diana I. Bail at 9/14/2005 02:53:00 AM
2 Comments:
here's mud in your own eye, the onus is on Roberts to recuse himself (and Thomas, Scalia, and Bader-Ginsgerg for that matter) if they have an interest and if that interest skews their judgement. All judges are human. All humans are biased. Roberts' involvement may be biased, but, insofar as it does not affect his judgement too much, so what? We're all skewed around every day. The guy deserves a little more credit than you imply I think...
MRW aka Brother Ray writes: "The guy deserves a little more credit than you imply I think..."
I haven't put my credit on the scale, but I think JR deserves a lot of credit; he's not a hack.
His lack of recusal, commented on in the LA Times, though it provided his only embarrassed moment yesterday, was probably not even a blip on the path to his confirmation. The commentators' overriding concern was that judges should recuse themselves more frequently if they are to follow judicial ethics in rule rather than spirit.
But that would be like shooting ducks in a, well, a duck blind...
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