January 20, 2006
Editorial Observer
Tripping Up on Trips: Judges Love Junkets as Much as Tom DeLay Does
By DOROTHY SAMUELS, NY TIMES

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I've been writing about the foibles of powerful public officials for more years than I care to reveal without a subpoena, and I still don't get it: why would someone risk his or her reputation and career for a lobbyist-bestowed freebie like a vacation at a deluxe resort?

Is it just plain old greed - the irresistible lure of bathrooms with heated towels, outstanding golf and tennis, and ski valets who will warm your boots on a cold day and deliver them right to your door? Is the tendency to sponge inappropriately off rich special interests an inherited trait, the product of some yet to be mapped junket gene? Or is it environmental, a sad reflection of the social and political culture?

I'm more perplexed than ever after reading all about Tom DeLay's outing in 2000 to the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland with Jack Abramoff, the former superlobbyist turned star witness in the sweeping public corruption inquiry now enveloping Mr. DeLay, the former House majority leader, and a still untold number of his Congressional colleagues. In addition to revealing the need to tighten Congressional gift and fund-raising rules, the episode has helped expose a tangle of other unethical transactions and has already robbed Mr. DeLay of his Capitol Hill clout. What was the Hammer thinking?

But it must be noted that Mr. DeLay's junket habit is something he has in common with the nation's judiciary, which he has criticized so many times for the wrong reasons. (Recall, for example, his threatening anti-judge screed in the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo case.) In 2000, the year of Mr. DeLay's lobbyist-financed St. Andrews trip, nearly 100 federal judges engaged in distressingly similar behavior. These judges attended all-expenses-paid private seminars for judges held at resorts offering excellent golf, tennis, skiing and spa services. The trips were underwritten by monied interests out to influence judges to rule in favor of corporate interests on issues like environmental protection and liability for harmful products.

Just as Mr. DeLay's Scotland trip with Mr. Abramoff was treated in official filings as privately sponsored "fact-finding," the judicial seminars are conducted under the innocuous-sounding banner of "judicial education." In reality, these slanted multiday sessions mock the ideal of an independent, impartial judiciary, and pose a threat to the appearance and reality of judicial integrity.

And it's not just judges from the lower federal courts who have deluded themselves into thinking that their trips will not undermine public trust. Just remember Justice Antonin Scalia's duck-hunting trip with Dick Cheney in 2004, shortly before the Supreme Court heard a big case of personal and political interest to the vice president. In September, Justice Scalia showed he'd learned little from the episode when he failed to attend the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. because he was teaching a seminar for the Federalist Society at the exclusive Beaver Creek ski area in Colorado. Justice Scalia permitted the society, an influential conservative legal group, to promote the event to lawyers, some of whom may have matters before the Supreme Court now or in the near future, as "a rare opportunity to spend time, both socially and intellectually," with a justice. The pitch had all the dignity and subtlety of a capital fund-raiser for a senior Ways and Means Committee member.

It would be nice if the judiciary itself would act to end judges' seamy travel perks, but when the ethics committee of the Judicial Conference took up the issue just two years go, it made the rules even more permissive. Last month, the American Bar Association committee charged with revising the A.B.A.'s influential Code of Official Conduct bowed to the wishes of the judiciary's small but vigorous Resort Caucus. It issued a draft perpetuating judicial junkets.

That inspires me to offer a proposal. Embarrassed by ethics scandals, the Republicans who run Congress seem poised to enact new lobbying reforms, including a crackdown on lobbyist-financed travel. While they are in cleanup mode, why don't they also bar special interests from wining and dining the judiciary? Although the rules for judges might wisely include a few separate wrinkles - like an overdue judicial pay raise or a small pot of money to underwrite real judicial educational programs - the basic principle is the same. Members of Congress should not be accepting compromising free trips or other gifts, and neither should federal judges.