Sens. Patrick Leahy and Joe Lieberman want Chief Justice William Rehnquist to tell them exactly what the "canons, procedures and rules" are on justices recusing themselves when their impartiality is thrown into doubt. Their curiosity was piqued by the eyebrows-raising duck-hunting trip Justice Antonin Scalia and Dick Cheney took right after the high court agreed to hear a lawsuit about the secrecy of Cheney's energy task force and how Bush energy policy was made.
In their request to Rehnquist, the senators wrote: "When a sitting judge, poised to hear a case involving a particular litigant, goes on vacation with that litigant, reasonable people will question whether that judge can be a fair and impartial adjudicator of that man's case or his opponent's claims."
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