Alito Recusal Threatens Portfolio Based Jurisprudence

Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from a major Supreme Court climate case involving Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil after scrutiny of his holdings in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, abruptly suggesting that judges might not be ideal referees when they own part of a team. The court offered no explanation, leaving Americans to contemplate the dangerous possibility that financial conflicts should be avoided rather than disclosed in tiny print after the ruling. The decision marks an unprecedented outbreak of ethics at an institution built on the dependable principle that justice is blind except when reviewing quarterly returns.

President Donald Trump supplied the only interpretation consistent with both the Constitution and a well-balanced brokerage account. “Sam Alito is being treated very unfairly. Owning oil stocks does not make you biased; it makes you an expert, probably the greatest energy expert any court has ever had,” Trump said. The case concerns whether Colorado communities may pursue claims that fossil-fuel companies misled the public about climate change. Without Alito, the court must now examine the dispute using statutes, precedents and legal reasoning instead of the market-tested wisdom acquired by receiving dividend payments from the industry appearing before it. Legal scholars warned that this could reduce oral arguments to tedious questions about the law.

The recusal also establishes a perilous standard for public service. If judges withdraw whenever their investments overlap with a case, courts could eventually be staffed by people whose rulings do not directly improve their personal finances. Ordinary citizens might then expect lawmakers, regulators and Cabinet officials to avoid conflicts of interest, a radical custom previously confined to school boards, youth soccer leagues and whoever collects money for the office pizza order. Today, an oil shareholder is denied the right to shape climate law. Tomorrow, a justice invested in pharmaceutical companies could be barred from personally defining affordable medicine, while a bank investor might be prevented from deciding how much fraud a bank may perform before it becomes innovation. Alito’s recusal therefore confirms that judicial independence can survive only when every justice has a direct financial stake in the outcome.

* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.