NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 26 March 2004 — Last week, US Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry’s claim that foreign leaders endorsed his candidacy over Bush’s for president.
Cheney blasted: “Sen. Kerry said that’s none of our business. But it is our business when a candidate for president claims the political endorsement of foreign leaders. At the very least, we have a right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so supportive of their candidacy.”
How curious that Cheney asserts “a right to know” the names and remarks of Kerry’s international supporters. Because Cheney simultaneously claims the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch have no such “right to know” names and remarks made by attendees at Bush’s National Energy Policy Development Group meetings, chaired by Cheney.
Does America have a “right to know” about US energy policies that, according to Washington State’s Congressman Jim McDermott, have “led to two invasions, two occupations” in the Middle East? And do Middle Easterners have a “right to know” about energy policies that shape their national destinies?
The US Supreme Court will soon answer these momentous questions. Weighing in will be Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who refuses to remove himself from Cheney’s case even though his close friendship with Cheney, a named litigant, and Cheney’s gift of free transportation to a Louisiana hunting venue, not only for Scalia, but for the Justice’s son and son-in-law, would clearly raise an inference of a conflict of interest in lesser courts.
Scalia cannot be forced to withdraw. America’s Founding Fathers and Constitution Framers made Supreme Court Justices answerable only to God, whom they called “Providence,” and assumed that Providence’s Justices would be uncommonly honorable men. But as the great English lawyer, theologian, and Catholic martyr, Sir Thomas Moore, wryly observed, honor has opportunity costs, and is therefore rare: ‘”If honor were profitable, everyone would be honorable.” In Cheney’s case, profit trumps honor. His “good friend” Scalia issued an extraordinary 21-page memorandum admitting he was guilty of accepting a free trip from Cheney for himself and his relatives. But Scalia scoffed: “If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.”
Scalia misses the point.
English writer George Bernard Shaw once asked an attractive woman, “Madame, would you go to bed with me for a thousand pounds?” The woman indignantly refused. “For ten thousand pounds?” he queried. The lady refused again. “Then how about fifty thousand pounds?” asked Shaw. “Perhaps,” the woman coyly replied. “And if I were to offer you five pounds?” asked Shaw. This time, the woman angrily exclaimed, “What do you take me for!”
“We have already established what you are,” Shaw calmly explained. “Now we are merely haggling over the price.”
Incredibly, Scalia did just that. Because he and his relatives hunted ducks two days longer than Cheney and flew back to Washington, D.C. on commercial tickets costing as much as round-trip tickets, Scalia contends, “None of us saved a cent by flying (down) on the vice president’s plane.”
Scalia proves himself a clever lawyer but a questionable justice. Sir Thomas Moore, as England’s Lord Chancellor, repeatedly defended himself against similar inferences of favoritism and even charges of bribery — of accepting money, “fair, great gilt cups,” and even a mere pair of gloves from litigants seeking his favor. Muslims are well aware that doing justice is a difficult task to be done by a judge “among people as if he is slaughtered without a knife,” according to one Hadith. This often means acting with fear of the hereafter, and in taking a stricter path. To a thoughtful qadi with a healthy fear of God, a gift is still a gift, and size has little to do with it. Scalia’s return-trip tickets may render Cheney’s gift of three free rides technically less valuable, but not any less wrongful. And even if Cheney’s gift were worthless, the hours Cheney and Scalia spent together on Air Force Two, the three-day hunt with its cocktail and dinner parties, the eating of all meals together, the frequent boat trips across the flooded marshes to the duck blinds add up to so familiar an association that Scalia himself felt compelled to make some startling assurances not heard in Washington, D.C. since President Clinton denied ever having “sex with that woman,” Monica Lewinsky.
Scalia assures us he and Cheney never slept together (Cheney “had his own quarters”), and that he and Cheney were never “alone” together “at any time during the trip, except for instances so brief and unintentional that” Scalia “could not recall them.”
One wonders whether instances of Scalia and Cheney not being “alone” together include Scalia’s son, son-in-law, or other likewise-interested parties. If so, being in the company of others hardly counts for much. The intimacy implied by Scalia’s very denial is embarrassing, and diminishes the dignity and decorum of America’s highest court.
What Scalia does recall is that “we said not a word about (Cheney’s) case.”
Really! Wouldn’t the best way of guaranteeing that have been to simply not take the trip with Cheney in the first place?
America strives to democratize Iraq and the Middle East. Success depends directly upon the conduct of the people involved in setting the example. If we want Muslim nations to embrace American democracy and law, then Americans must examine the Shariah and its high judicial standards. Muslims, even those who seek out the democratic experiment, will not accept anything less.
Scalia himself, in his own words, and with his own pen, has established what he is.
And Muslims understand.
All that remains to determine is the price.
— Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana.
