As you probably know, the honorable Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was recently caught out for having taken a free ride to an Alaska fishing vacation on a private jet owned by a billionaire who later had business before the court, a case in which Alito joined the majority in deciding for the rich man. The trip would have cost something like $100k one-way if he’d had to pay for it himself. Knowing that this sordid bit of graft was about to become public, Alito tried to pre-empt public outrage by wangling op-ed space in some financial rag called the Wall Street Journal, speaking up in his own defense.
Now, the honorable Alito is a product of Princeton, from which he graduated summa cum laude, and Yale law school, where he was an editor of the law review. Following a judicial career in the lower courts, he has served on our nation’s highest court for more than 17 years. So I expected his apologia to be the epitome of rhetorical and logical excellence, of the highest judicial reasoning, the apotheosis of eloquence and persuasion.
What we got, in part, was this: he declared that his honorable bottom had flown in “a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.” A variation of the “if I hadn’t done it/took it, someone else woulda” argument.
Now, when I was a child in dusty Denton, Texas in the 1960’s, I once snuck into a movie theater via the fire exit and saw a movie for free. That was wrong. Luckily for me, I didn’t get caught, but if I had, I hope I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to declare, “well, it doesn’t count, because the seat was empty anyway.” And if I had, I don’t think it would have worked. But then, I’m not an Ivy-League-trained jurist.
And note the coy, “as far as I am aware.” Heavens, only a real hater, or an annoying ethical fusspot, would suspect Judge Sam of bumping the billionaire’s poor mother-in-law from her aisle seat.
I’d like to know more about the nature of the flight. Was it fully booked (if that’s the right term to use for a private jet), or was the good judge wandering up and down an empty aisle? Or chilling out in the entertainment lounge? Or was he using his time productively, making notes on how to further destroy the interests of minorities and women, promote degradation of the environment in the interest of corporate profits, and weaken voting rights? Were there cocktails? Or was it BYOB?
Maybe I have Justice Alito all wrong. Maybe the man is so environmentally conscientious that he couldn’t bear the thought of wasting jet fuel on an empty seat. It actually never occurred to me before that I’m guilty of idly sitting at home while private jets all over the world go blithely on their under-capacity way.
Now we know that Alito didn’t get his place on this plane because its owner, Paul Singer, expected a favorable decision in return. That (a $2.4 billion award in a civil case decided 6 years later in a Supreme Court decision that included Alito’s vote) was just a coincidence! He got his place just because it was…there.
I had no idea it was so easy! So I would like to ask Mr. Singer to please keep me in mind whenever one of his jets is going someplace nice and has an open spot. I too hate to see wasteful half-full luxury private jet trips when I could do my part to make them fuller luxury private jet trips! And also my wife. And my mom. We all want to pitch in. Just parenthetically, we like Paris. And also Bali. Santorini is nice. But whatever, we’re flexible.
Another leg of Alito’s self-defense: he didn’t recuse himself from the Singer decision, since knowing about the free trip “would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.”
I would dare to call this a “novel argument,” as they say in the legal racket. The person who is suspected of wrongdoing gets to decide whether those suspicions are “reasonable and unbiased.”
And now I know, because I certainly do doubt Judge Alito’s ethics: I am evidently a biased, unreasonable person.
The Garden of Eaton 