Bricker, thanks for the info. I’m at a gig and just have my phone with me so searches are slow and difficult.
In light of the fact that the meeting was mischaracterized as “Tea Party only” I can’t see that there’s much here to get knotted about.
“Closed meeting?”
Before I start finding examples, let’s settle ground rules. As I demonstrated above, this was not a closed meeting – every representative was able to attend, and bring a staffer. You DID acknowledge that correction, right?
So the counter-examples would be similarly open meetings, not closed meetings, with (I imagine) any examples of closed meetings being an even worse ding. In other words, an OPEN meeting of the LGBT Marriage Task Force would be the equivalent; a closed meeting an even worse offense.
Agreed?
Works for me.
Open meetings I am not really fussed about (although I suppose an “open” meeting of the KKK where minorities are “technically” allowed would be problematical). Indeed I hope the justices make themselves available to talk to various groups about the law. That is a good thing, broadly speaking.
I already stipulated earlier that if Scalia’s meeting with Bachmann & Company was open (as it seemed to be from your post) then I have no issue in this case. I did not know that originally.
I do have issue with the Koch brothers stuff as things get more dicey when someone is accepting what amounts to a gift to a nice place for a few days and even more dicey when one of their spouses makes substantial money off of a political group dedicated to a partisan issue.
There is a continuum with these things with the appearance if impropriety low at one end and high at the other. Koch brothers stuff is definitely walking towards the high end. Scalia in his talk to congresscritters recently is at the low end if on the line at all.
What if it’s not the spouse making substantial money? What if it was the justice himself (or herself)? Can they say “Oh, yeah, well that was then, this is now”? Why is a golf trip to Palm Springs on the Koch Bros. dime rank impropriety but years as the general counsel of the ACLU not? Can Justice Thomas say “Well, that trip was last term and Ginnie doesn’t work for Heritage anymore, so no big deal. Just like Kiki’s old job.”?
And Judge Reinhardt’s wife, who is the executive director of the ACLU, and whose organization has been very active in the fight for same-sex marriage rights? Her husband authored a very strong same-sex marriage decision recently (you may have heard of it!)
Should he have recused himself instead?
So if former prosecutors and J. Ginsberg should not recuse themselves from cases where their former client is a party, the adverse party (the accused in criminal cases and the oppressors in the case of the ACLU) don’t have cause to say: hey, Judge Pudge was advocating and taking money from Client Cleo a short time back (a month, week, year, decade) and I cannot get a fair hearing in front of Judge Pudge. As a pro tem, if a former client came before me, I’d recuse myself. Period. If my spouse were a major stockholder, I’d recuse. Not only do I not think I could be impartial, it would appear to anyone looking that it isn’t on the up and up.
I don’t think that Ginsberg should hear cases where the ACLU is a litigant. I don’t think that Scalia should hear cases where his hunting buddy Dick Cheney is a named party. Nor do I think that Scalia should be meeting with any political organization. How does he figure that it is inappropriate to sit at the public State of the Union speech where all government figures attend, yet finds no problem speaking to whatever private Koch group this is?
Yes.
Not sure I agree about Ginsburg.
How distant is distant enough?
Most Supreme Court justices will have had lengthy careers prior to becoming a SCOTUS justice. They will have represented (perhaps) numerous clients and seen many cases when they became judges.
According to the Wiki page on Ginsburg she became a judge in 1980. I presume she stopped her employment with the ACLU at that time. She was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.
We are now 31 years passed when she was at the ACLU but that still prejudices her (and she was away from them for 13 years before becoming a SCOTUS justice)? I have no doubt she is sympathetic to the organization but as humans every judge on the bench will be sympathetic to various organizations. That is unavoidable.
If Ginsburg has to recuse for her work as an attorney in the 70s I think you will find it hard to have judges on many cases.
The difference Kimmy_Gibbler is missing is today Thomas is making substantial money (via his wife) from a partisan organization. Scalia was a hunting buddy with Cheney when it mattered and enjoying Koch brothers largess when it mattered. Reinhardt is benefiting from his wife’s position today.
The appearance of impropriety is much stronger with that group of guys than it is for Ginsburg if she hears a case from an organization she worked for 31 years ago.
Heck you can impeach the President for lying about a blow job. I suppose you can impeach folks for just about anything.
If Scalia met “secretly” with the tea party to advise them about pending or future litigation and kept it secret so that he would not have to recuse himself from participating in the judgment, I’d say that’s impeachable.
Otherwise, he has as much right to hang out with idiots as anyone else.
Heck, he can even run for congress if he wants to.
It’s not what he lied about but rather who he lied to (and I do not mean Hillary).
We’ve since learned in this thread is was not so much a secret meeting. Apparently it was open to any congresscritter who wanted to come. Just somehow mostly Tea Party people showed up (and three democrats IIRC). Dunno how it worked that way. I hate Scalia but I’d jump at that chance were I a congressman when it happened.
You want a lack of judicial restraint? Look at John Marshall. He was the Chief Justice who wrote the decision in Marbury v Madison. And he was the guy who had failed to issue the commission to William Marbury.
Did you by chance read Judge Reinhardt’s decision explaining his refusal to recuse himself?
No. Was it because he did not have sexual relations with that woman? 
That’s certainly a fair question. Judge Reinhardt’s decision is here.
I’ve read it, and found it unconvincing. It boils down to,“Trust me, my wife has her opinions, and I have mine, and they don’t necessarily agree with each other, so don’t worry about it.” I always doubt a public official’s faith in his own objectivity.
For what it’s worth, I was enumerating, from memory, a selection of justices both liberal and conservative across an 80-year time span who had engaged in similar activities to Scalia’s. Perhaps I should have spent a couple of hours documenting each with cites. Or perhaps I should not have bothered at all, Great Debates having turned over the past few years into Petty Nitpicks Aimed At Proving My Side Is Right. Frankly, I would celebrate with whoops of joy if Scalia did something impeachable and were caught and thrown out on his supercilious, sardonic ass. But in this case he was in fact doing nothing that other justices over time and across the ideological spectrum have not.
And yes, Bricker declining to respond, I do draw a distinction between Scalia’s actions and Thomas’s – If Thomas does not recuse himself, or is not pressured by the other justices to do so, I believe he holds himself open to allegations of impropriety – and I’d hope that conservative Republicans of good will would see how it injures his impoartiality.
One thing you can say about Scalia – while his personal political views may lead him to really wanting to rule in a given way, he will take his stand on the basis of the constitutional text. Even if he’s personally disgusted by the results, he does have that degree pf integrity – usually.