Monday, October 11, 2010
Virginia Thomas
By involving himself in the decision to throw out campaign contributions limits for corporations and unions, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas helped expand fundraising opportunities for his wife’s new political organization.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the most partisan of any Supreme Court justice spouse ever, according to The New York Times, is the founder of Liberty Central, a conservative group that seeks to end the “tyranny” of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
In January, the high court ruled it illegal to limit the spending of businesses and organized labor, clearing the way for big-money interests to pour huge sums into the 2010 election. In order to cloak their spending, many contributors are giving to certain nonprofit groups, like Liberty Central, which are not required by law to disclose their financial backers.
Ginny Thomas launched her organization in late 2009 with two unidentified gifts of $500,000 and $50,000.
“It’s shocking that you would have a Supreme Court justice sitting on a case that might implicate in a very fundamental way the interests of someone who might have contributed to his wife’s organization,” Deborah L. Rhode, law professor and director of the Stanford University Center on the Legal Profession, told The New York Times.
Supreme Court justices are supposed to recuse themselves from cases in which they may have a personal bias, including those in which they or close relatives have a financial interest. However, such self-disqualifications are voluntary.
In one particularly notorious case from 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia refused to recuse himself from a case involving Vice-President Dick Cheney even though he went duck hunting with Cheney while the case was being considered. Scalia argued that there was no conflict of interest because he and Cheney never hunted in the same blind, and they never discussed the case against Cheney. Cheney won the case on a 7-2 vote.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues (by Jackie Calmes, New York Times)
Wife of Supreme Court Justice Thomas Starts Conservative Lobbying Group (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
When to Recuse—The Sotomayor Standard vs. The Scalia Standard (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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