Legal News

Alabama AG on Massey: Don?t Federalize Recusal Rules

By Dan Slater

Let’s begin the day at One First Street, N.E., where the plot of the West Virginia Recusal Kerfuffle has recently thickened.

It’s been over a year since West Virginia’s supreme court overturned a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy. Shortly thereafter, if you remember, the court agreed to rehear the case after photos surfaced showing one of the judges, former Chief Justice Elliott “Spike” Maynard, and Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship, whooping it up together in Monaco. Last May, the justices reaffirmed their November ruling in favor of Massey.

On March 3, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear the case, about whether the due process clause required a different justice, Brent D. Benjamin — who received more than $3 million in election funds from Massey CEO Blankenship but refused to disqualify himself from cases involving Massey — to step aside. (Click here for docs, compliments of Scotus blog; and click here for LB background.)

Many organizations have filed amicus briefs for the petitioner, including Public Citizen, NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, the American Bar Association and the Committee for Economic Development.

Who might support Massey Energy and Justice Benjamin? None other than Alabama AG Troy King. And he’s asking his colleagues to join him. Here’s a report from the Charleston Gazette.

Dan Schweitzer, a lawyer for the National Association of Attorneys General, reportedly e-mailed a memorandum on Friday outlining Troy’s position to other attorneys general across the country. “The amicus brief will argue,” Schweitzer’s e-mail states, “that once a state has chosen its preferred method of selecting judges - whatever that method is - states should have the ability to police judicial participation through carefully constructed state recusal policies.

“In other words, making recusal a federal issue by ‘constitutionalizing’ it is unnecessary and, as a practical matter, unwise,” the e-mail states.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 20, 2009 (boomark / email).