On jan. 5, Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, with one of Scalia’s children, flew on an Air Force II Gulfstream jet to Armelia, La., for several days of duck hunting. Recent reports are that the vice president’s office paid for Scalia’s plane trip; there is no indication as to who paid for the food, lodging and other amenities, other than reports that Cheney and Scalia were the guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of an oil services company. According to the sheriff for St. Mary Parish, Scalia had come to the parish “several times before.”
A month before the trip, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the vice president’s appeal in Cheney v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (known as the Energy Task Force case). Newspapers and commentators are calling for Scalia’s recusal because of the extent of socializing occurring while the case is before the court. This argument is not compelling, for the reasons explained below. There is, however, another potentially more serious problem: Whether Scalia and Cheney violated the federal statute concerning gratuities given to, or received by, public officials.
