Frank Pallone: “I know my colleague mentioned the fact that the Supreme Court should act on this collectively. My understanding is that…”

“I know my colleague mentioned the fact that the Supreme Court should act on this collectively. My understanding is that on Tuesday of this week, March 2, the Supreme Court issued its first collective statement related to the controversy surrounding Justice Scalia, and basically said they would let Justice Scalia decide by himself whether he should sit in on this case in which the Vice President is the named plaintiff. Again, I think that is unfortunate, because I do think that since Justice Scalia has been so reluctant to recuse himself, the likelihood that he would do it on his own is probably less than if the Court as a whole made that decision. But, nonetheless, we can still hope that if we continue to talk about this and bring it up that maybe he will recuse himself. I have some statistics about the current justices recusing themselves from cases, and the fact is many have recused themselves in many cases. Chief Justice Rehnquist, for example, has recused himself 299 times since he joined the Court and Justice Clarence Thomas has recused himself 199 times. So it is not unusual for that to happen. I still, for the life of me, do not understand why in this situation, which is so high profile, that Justice Scalia does not simply say, look, I will stay out of this one. I will recuse myself and I will not allow myself to participate. It seems like it is a very simple thing that could be done, and I do think it is important for us to continue to bring it up.”