PATTERSON, La. — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.
The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney’s upcoming case before the U.S. Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the court agreed to take up Cheney’s bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.
According to those who met them at the airstrip here, the justice and the vice president flew from Washington on Jan. 5 and were accompanied by a second, backup Air Force jet that carried staff and security aides to the vice president.
Two military helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade en route to a secluded, hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman.
The Los Angeles Times previously reported the two men hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn’t clear then that they had traveled together or that Scalia had accompanied Cheney on Air Force Two.
Several experts in legal ethics questioned whether Scalia should decide the case.
"In my view, this further ratchets it up. If the vice president is the source of generosity, it means Scalia is accepting a gift of some value from a litigant in a case before him," said New York University Law Professor Stephen Gillers.
"It is not just a trip with a litigant. It’s a trip at the expense of the litigant. This is an easy case for stepping aside," he said.
Two years ago, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch sued Cheney, seeking to learn whether the vice president and his staff had met behind closed doors with lobbyists and corporate officials from the oil, gas, coal and electric power industries.
A judge ordered Cheney to turn over documents detailing who met with his energy task force. Cheney appealed, and in September, Bush administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and reverse the judge’s order.
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