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Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Courts - "When do Supreme Court justices need to just sit down and be quiet?"
Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West of Slate have a lengthy, interesting article today -- here are a few quotes:
There has been growing debate about the ethics and proper parameters of judicial recusals, where the concern that a justice's extracurricular activities, investments, or relationships suggest that he or she has prejudged a case. * * *But if we put aside these difficult issues related to extrajudicial entanglements, there lies a more basic matter that the justices must also begin to address. What about the judicial gut-spilling? Above and beyond the ethical rules that require a justice to recuse herself if she has evinced bias in a specific case, should the justices be held to a different standard when it comes to what they say and how they say it? Should these standards be different for sitting and retired justices? As justices speak more and more frequently off the bench, should they come to some agreement about when their words undermine the institution as a whole?
One viewpoint—let's call it the old school—holds that justices should say nothing that isn't contained within the four corners of a written opinion. When justices pontificate off the bench, it sows confusion and controversy and undermines the impression that jurists all float above the fray. The other side holds that transparency is always better than mystification and that so long as there is no real threat to the court's impartiality in a particular case, there is great value in lifting the veil of secrecy around the workings of the court and revealing the men and women hiding out behind the red velvet curtain.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 15, 2010 09:47 AM
Posted to Courts in general