Special guy
The Times lets us know, rather belatedly, that Trump and Anthony Kennedy have a link.
But they had a connection, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Congress in February 2017. As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.
“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”
Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.
During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.
How very cozy.
So much for putting a “Washington Outsider” in to office. Of course we knew that already.
What are the standards for recusal in cases involving a plaintiff or defendant with this sort of connection to a judge?
Funny you should ask, I just asked the same question on a tweet of Norm Eisen’s (the former ethics guy in the Obama admin). His tweet said it’s all wrong for a president to appoint a justice who will have to rule on a case involving that very president. I asked if we can at least force the new one to recuse.
You can’t “force” a Supreme Court Justice to recuse. (I almost wrote “to do anything,” but that’s not literally true — they remain subject to generally applicable laws. But in the context of the performance of their duties, it’s pretty much the case.) Parties to a case can bring a motion to recuse, but it’s up to the individual justice to decide whether or not to recuse him/herself.
There’s a federal code of judicial ethics that covers all other federal judicial officers, and the justices sometimes look to it as a guide, but it doesn’t actually apply to them.
That all sounds like a grotesque gap in the law, and perhaps it is, but it’s not entirely clear what the solution should be. Sure, make the federal ethics code apply to them — who enforces it? Who decides whether Justice X should be recused in a particular case? The other justices? The chief justice? A panel of lower court judges? Some dedicated committee of legal ethics experts (appointed by whom, for how long)? To whom would you trust the power to decide which justices get to decide a case or not? It’s not an insoluble problem, but it would require a lot of thought, and quite possibly a constitutional amendment.
I’m not entirely sure that the existing system (the justices decide for themselves, and if one of them grossly breaches ethics, then Congress can impeach) isn’t at least as good as the alternatives.
“Who watches the watchers?” and all that, ya. It’s another place where the function of government depends on good will, respect for norms, and a shared commitment to the rule of law and democratic ideals that goes beyond and comes ahead of policy and party – which does not apply remotely as much today as it needs to. And sadly, the people who are most likely to merit impeachment are the people who would be impeached only by other people who are the most reluctant to do so for fear of it coming off as partisan instead of simple housecleaning for the body politic.
If a judge made a ruling in a lower court, where that judge’s relationship to parties to the case were found to be inappropriate, that ruling would generally, theoretically, come under review, right? And again, if so, I’m sure the Supreme Court would have to decide that itself, and the skeevy Justice in question, if still at the bench, would be able with impunity (other than the remote threat of impeachment) to opt in or out of that decision too. Still, it’d be some basis for correcting some of the damages done by Trump-compromised tools in robes down the line.
Screechy @ 4 – oh right, I knew that, but it went out of my head. They sometimes do recuse, and other times don’t, and there are discussions, so that’s how I knew it, but I still managed to forget that I knew it.
Ugh what a garbage fire.