Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Should either Justices Thomas or Kagan recuse themselves from the ObamaCare case?My response:
Justice Thomas is the easier case, because he had no involvement in the ObamaCare legislation or legal strategy, nor did his wife. As Tevi Troy commented in yesterday’s POLITICO, citing “alumni of the White House Counsel’s Office from several administrations,” Thomas’s ”wife’s activities would come into play only if she had a financial interest at stake in the case, which she does not.” And as Marcia Coyle and Tony Mauro noted in Monday’s National Law Journal, citing DePaul Law School’s Jeffrey Shaman, “Twenty-five years ago, they might have said judges should control their wives. But she has a right to her own life.”
Justice Kagan is a closer call. We already know her sentiments about ObamaCare from her breathless email to Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe: “I hear they have the votes, Larry!!” But the real question is how closely she was involved in developing the legal strategy for defending the law – as head of the Justice Department office charged with that responsibility. As The Hill reported yesterday, “Emails show that Kagan’s office mounted an early and aggressive effort to prepare for legal challenges to the individual insurance mandate, but the records released so far do not contradict Kagan’s statement that she was not directly involved in the planning.” The operative words are “so far,” which is why House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, as POLITICO reported yesterday, “has asked the Obama administration to provide documents and internal correspondence on … Kagan’s role in defense of the health reform law.”
In the end, of course, recusal is the justice’s call. But especially in a case as important as this, the public deserves to know the facts.
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