2026-06-01T10:00:08.087Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/scalia-cheney-supreme-court-recusal-duck-hunting
- 曾保密的文件显示，大法官安东宁·斯卡利亚推动最高法院受理迪克·切尼的能源工作组案件。
- 根据大法官约翰·保罗·史蒂文斯的材料，在大法官最初投票驳回上诉后，斯卡利亚说服同僚受理此案。
- 文件披露了斯卡利亚在与切尼一同狩猎野鸭引发伦理争议之前的幕后角色。
本文由AI生成摘要，经CNN编辑审核。
2003年末，最高法院大法官们准备驳回一起涉及时任副总统迪克·切尼的案件，切尼试图阻止公开其能源政策工作组的敏感政治记录，该工作组曾建议开放更多联邦土地用于油气钻探。
但时任大法官安东宁·斯卡利亚采取了行动——这些举动在当时对公众保密。
长期以来，斯卡利亚一直与这起争议有关联。在法院宣布受理该案三周后，他与切尼一同进行了计划已久的野鸭狩猎之旅，这引发了最高法院伦理方面最持久的争议之一。
CNN审查的曾保密材料显示，斯卡利亚最初是如何推动决定受理切尼的上诉的。
起诉切尼工作组索要文件的团体之一——塞拉俱乐部，对斯卡利亚的公正性提出质疑，并正式要求他回避此案。斯卡利亚发表了一篇令人难忘的21页声明，拒绝退出这起涉及说客及其他可能与工作组会面的外部人士的争议。
斯卡利亚的 defiant 声明混合了华盛顿上层社交往来的过往——“大法官威廉·道格拉斯曾是富兰克林·罗斯福总统扑克派对的常客”——以及度假细节：“我从未与副总统在同一个狩猎棚里打猎。”
即便在近年出现了诸如大法官与企业高管奢华出行、配偶与唐纳德·特朗普总统存在关联等利益冲突争议，2004年的斯卡利亚-切尼争议依然格外突出。
最终，切尼以7比2的投票结果在最高法院胜诉，在经历另一轮下级法院诉讼后，他得以避免公开能源工作组的参与人员名单。
当时不为人知的是，大法官们曾初步投票反对切尼关于获取文件的上诉，正是斯卡利亚说服他们受理此案。
据美国国会图书馆公开的已故大法官约翰·保罗·史蒂文斯的材料（CNN一直在审查这些文件），斯卡利亚多次请求重新审议该上诉，并撰写备忘录敦促同僚介入。
“此案涉及至关重要的分权问题，”斯卡利亚写道，坚称下级上诉法院“轻视”了切尼的诉求。
史蒂文斯的档案中还包含斯卡利亚21页声明的草稿，并披露他曾向一名资深同僚寻求建议。尽管此案带有政治色彩，但大法官们并未在政治或意识形态上出现严重分歧。切尼请求大法官介入是在诉讼的早期阶段，大法官们甚至对法院是否拥有管辖权持怀疑态度。
如今，切尼案的相关材料格外具有现实意义：最高法院正在审理诸多考验总统特权的案件，公众对大法官们保密程序的批评也日益加剧，包括选择受理案件的不透明初审阶段。在调取令状申请（即所谓的certiorari petition）的初步筛选阶段，可能会出现利益冲突问题。公众通常永远不会知道谁投票支持或驳回上诉。
“我此前从未知晓他在受理此案中发挥了任何作用。天哪，”代表挑战工作组的团体的乔治华盛顿大学法学教授艾伦·莫里森说道，“既然他是此案的推动者，他却不回避，这就更成问题了。”
斯卡利亚谈及与切尼一同狩猎
1:35 • 来源：CNN
https://www.cnn.com/videos/crime/2012/07/19/piers-scalia-hunting-with-cheney.cnn
斯卡利亚于2016年去世。他曾表示，自己与切尼的活动并未损害其公正性，也不构成回避的任何理由。他自始至终都认为自己不受影响。
多家大报曾敦促他退出切尼案。例如，《纽约时报》在社论中写道：“为了司法公正以及法院的声誉，斯卡利亚大法官应当退出切尼先生的案件……通过与切尼先生小范围度假并享受其提供的便利，斯卡利亚大法官给人留下了偏袒切尼先生的印象。”该报还提及斯卡利亚免费搭乘空军二号专机一事。
此类评论和公众批评只会让斯卡利亚更加坚持己见。他表示，如果自己回避，就相当于向压力屈服。他认为这本身会损害最高法院的声誉。
“既然我认为自己的公正性不会受到合理质疑，那么我认为自己不应回避，”斯卡利亚写道。
“在我看来，回避会损害法院，”他补充道，“……民众必须对大法官的诚信抱有信心，而如果一个体系认为大法官会因最微小的友谊或恩惠而被收买，且媒体热衷于吹毛求疵，那么这种信心就无从谈起。”
然而，如果公众当时知晓斯卡利亚为推动法院受理切尼的上诉所发挥的作用，对他决定的反应可能会更加强烈。
纽约大学伦理学者斯蒂芬·吉利斯当时曾批评斯卡利亚，他近日告诉CNN：“考虑到切尼在本案中的政府和个人利益，再加上斯卡利亚与切尼的友谊以及狩猎之旅的时机，他为切尼的利益施加的影响力越大，其幕后活动就越发令人不齿。”
下级法院拒绝叫停与国家能源政策发展小组相关的文件调取请求后，乔治·W·布什政府的律师跳过了通常的诉讼程序步骤，向最高法院寻求救济。政府律师辩称，即便在尚未确定哪些与工作组参与者相关的文件必须公开的初步阶段，法官们也在侵犯行政权。
诉讼挑战者一直在索要与工作组会面人员的记录。批评人士称，该小组曾受油气高管影响；该小组提出的有利于行业的建议包括开放阿拉斯加的北极国家野生动物保护区进行钻探。
大多数大法官最初投票驳回了申请；史蒂文斯在一次私人会议上潦草的部分笔记显示，管辖权是一个绊脚石。（这一时期其他大法官的档案尚未公开。）
史蒂文斯的材料中包含2003年11月26日一次私人会议的记录。记录显示，最初有7票反对受理此案，并有“驳回调取令”的标注，似乎计划于2003年12月1日发布公告。但该标注被划掉，并有额外标记表明斯卡利亚曾两次请求重新审议此案。
斯卡利亚本人可能早期也曾表现出一些犹豫。史蒂文斯的笔记显示，在第一次私人会议上，只有他和大法官安东尼·肯尼迪准备受理此案。
可以确定的是，2003年12月11日，斯卡利亚向同僚写下了一份私人便条，表明了自己的意愿：“我将此案重新列入审议名单，以审查副总统的调取令状申请是否符合管辖权要求。我已认定其符合。”
斯卡利亚批评地区法院对切尼不利的裁决，以及上诉法院拒绝介入叫停被称为“证据开示”的文件调取程序。
他还谈及了该问题更深层次的法律要点，称其引发了关于分权的重大担忧。“下级法院的处理方式有可能令行政部门在履行宪法职责时陷入尴尬，”斯卡利亚写道，“此外，如果允许证据开示，行政部门保护其内部事务免受侵扰的利益将无可挽回地丧失。”
斯卡利亚与切尼是在杰拉尔德·福特政府工作期间结识的好友，他一直是行政权力的坚定支持者。
斯卡利亚撰写备忘录的次日，大法官们举行了另一场私人会议，足够多的人改变了投票立场以受理此案，相关命令于12月15日公开。口头辩论最终定于4月举行。
当斯卡利亚在案件受理后不久与切尼前往路易斯安那州狩猎野鸭的消息传开后，这场文件争议迅速成为全国重大新闻。
此次狩猎之旅于2004年1月初进行，斯卡利亚后来表示，计划早在前一年夏天就已确定。他们度假的细节最早由路易斯安那州摩根城的《每日评论》报道。随后《洛杉矶时报》跟进了这一报道，将焦点放在潜在的利益冲突上，并引发了全国范围内的关注。
批评人士承认，政府部门之间的社交往来是华盛顿生活的常态，但他们辩称，在这起直接涉及切尼的诉讼中，野鸭狩猎之旅至少造成了不当行为的表象。
塞拉俱乐部要求斯卡利亚回避的动议强调，切尼的“自身行为是本案的核心”，且此次度假与大法官和行政部门官员之间的常规社交往来不同。
在收到塞拉俱乐部的动议后，斯卡利亚于3月4日写下了一封标注为“私人与保密”的信件给史蒂文斯，请求他审阅自己拒绝回避请求的声明草稿。“我很乐意听取您对其形式和内容的看法——以及您认为我应采取的恰当做法。”
斯卡利亚的草稿与3月18日公开的备忘录并无实质性差异，尽管他缓和了部分段落的语气。
在公开的声明中，斯卡利亚提及了莫里森此前在2003年10月写给他的一封私人信件，当时两人关系尚可，莫里森当时即将出任斯坦福法学院教职。
“在本案反对调取令状申请的摘要提交前两天，塞拉俱乐部的首席律师，我的一位朋友，给我写了一封热情的信，邀请我到斯坦福法学院为他的一个班级讲课……我当时并未觉得这封信和邀请有任何不妥。如果我当时采用了本次动议中提出的标准，我的想法肯定会截然不同。”
在最初撰写声明草稿时，斯卡利亚希望附上那封“亲爱的尼诺”信件。他当时对这一情况的描述也更为尖锐。“如果他们认为我如此容易被收买，那么他们的首席律师肯定不会在提交反对调取令状申请摘要的前两天给我写一封热情的信（附件为证），邀请我到斯坦福法学院为他的一个班级讲课。”
斯卡利亚还做了其他修改，但他的核心立场始终不变：“如果人们真的认为最高法院大法官可以被如此廉价地收买，那么这个国家的处境比我想象的还要糟糕。”
案件档案中没有史蒂文斯对斯卡利亚草稿看法的相关通信记录。斯卡利亚曾告知他，希望在史蒂文斯的办公室进行私下会面。不过，在核心法律问题上，史蒂文斯似乎对行政特权感到担忧。在另一封备忘录中，史蒂文斯表达了对潜在证据开示范围的担忧，曾一度将挑战者的行为称为“钓鱼式调查”。
2004年4月的口头辩论结束后，大法官以7比2的投票结果推翻了下级法院的裁决，将案件发回下级法院，由法官重新考虑是否应公开参与人员的记录。
“这并非一起常规的证据开示纠纷，”肯尼迪代表多数方写道，称相关请求针对的是副总统及其他在该小组中为总统提供建议的高级官员。“正如我们此前指出的，当行政部门维护其办公自主性、保障通信机密性的利益受到影响时，需适用特殊考量因素。”
斯卡利亚未单独撰写意见，但签署了大法官克拉伦斯·托马斯发表的一份更支持切尼的协同意见。托马斯表示，最初裁决支持挑战者的地区法院越权了。托马斯与斯卡利亚一道，主张直接推翻原判，终结关于文件的诉讼。
在“切尼诉美国哥伦比亚特区地区法院案”中，只有露丝·巴德·金斯伯格大法官和戴维·苏特大法官持反对意见。金斯伯格随后罕见地在法庭上宣读了其反对意见的部分内容。
她批评同僚介入此案，并坚称哥伦比亚特区巡回法院已经考虑到了分权问题。“正如上诉法院所暗示的，证据开示可以限定在两个问题上：除联邦官员外，是否有其他人参与了能源政策小组，以及如果有的话，参与程度如何？”
工作组于2001年5月提交建议后，相关答案多年来始终成谜。美国总审计局在2003年的一份报告中称，由于切尼拒绝提供信息，调查受阻。
然而在2007年，《华盛顿邮报》获得了一份布什政府的保密名单，显示在工作组制定建议期间，切尼及其助手曾与多名行业高管会面，包括安然和埃克森美孚的高管。
部分姓名随着时间推移被泄露。但正如《华盛顿邮报》所指出的，最高法院保护切尼工作组的裁决确保了大多数信息始终未被公开。
Once-confidential documents reveal Scalia’s role in Supreme Court taking up famous Dick Cheney case
2026-06-01T10:00:08.087Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/scalia-cheney-supreme-court-recusal-duck-hunting
- Once-confidential documents reveal Justice Antonin Scalia drove the Supreme Court to hear Dick Cheney’s energy task force case.
- Scalia persuaded colleagues to take the appeal after justices initially voted to reject it, according to materials from Justice John Paul Stevens.
- The documents show Scalia’s behind-the-scenes role before his duck hunting trip with Cheney generated an ethics controversy.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
In late 2003, Supreme Court justices were prepared to reject a case involving then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s attempt to keep private politically sensitive records from his energy policy task force that had recommended opening more federal lands to oil and gas drilling.
But then-Justice Antonin Scalia launched into action – in moves concealed from the public at the time.
Scalia has long been linked to the dispute. He went on a long-planned duck hunting trip with Cheney three weeks after the court announced it would hear the case, generating one of the most enduring controversies over Supreme Court ethics.
Once-confidential materials reviewed by CNN show how Scalia drove the decision to hear the Cheney appeal in the first place.
The Sierra Club, one of the groups that sued the Cheney task force for documents, challenged Scalia’s impartiality and formally requested that he recuse himself. Scalia responded with a memorable 21-page statement refusing to take himself out of the dispute over lobbyists and other outsiders who may have met with the task force.
Scalia’s defiant statement included a mix of hobnobbing history in Washington’s upper echelons – “Justice (William) Douglas was a regular at President Franklin Roosevelt’s poker parties” – and vacation detail: “I never hunted in the same blind with the Vice President.”
Even with more recent conflict-of-interest debates, such as over justices’ lavish travel with business executives or spousal connections to President Donald Trump, the 2004 Scalia-Cheney controversy stands out.
In the end, Cheney won the Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote, and after another round of lower court litigation, he was able to avoid disclosing who participated in the energy task force.
What was unknown at the time is the justices had tentatively voted against Cheney’s appeal regarding the documents, and it was Scalia who persuaded them to take up the case.
According to now-public materials at the Library of Congress of the late Justice John Paul Stevens that CNN has been reviewing, Scalia repeatedly sought reconsideration of the appeal and wrote a memo to his colleagues urging their intervention.
“The case raises separation of powers issues of the first order,” Scalia wrote, insisting that a lower appellate court had “pooh-poohed” Cheney’s interests.
The Stevens files also contain a draft of Scalia’s 21-page statement and reveal his effort to seek advice from a senior colleague on the bench. Despite the political valence of the case, the justices were not sharply split politically or ideologically. Cheney’s request for the justices’ intervention had come at an early stage of litigation, and justices were skeptical about whether they even had jurisdiction.
Materials in the Cheney case are especially salient today as the court considers many cases testing presidential prerogatives and as criticism builds over the justices’ secretive processes, including the opaque first stage of choosing cases to hear. Potential conflicts of interest can arise when petitions for certiorari, as they are called, are first screened. The public typically never knows who voted for or against an appeal.
“I never knew he had any role in the cert grant. Oh, boy,” said George Washington University law professor Alan Morrison, who represented groups challenging the task force. “That he was the proponent makes it all the more iffy for him not to recuse himself.”
Scalia jokes about hunting with Cheney
1:35 • Source: CNN
https://www.cnn.com/videos/crime/2012/07/19/piers-scalia-hunting-with-cheney.cnn
Scalia died in 2016. He said his activities with Cheney did not undermine his impartiality or provide any basis for recusal. He plainly felt unencumbered, start to finish, in his participation.
Several big newspapers had urged him to sit out the Cheney case. The New York Times, for example, editorialized, “In the interest of justice, and of the court’s reputation, Justice Scalia should step aside in Mr. Cheney’s case. … By vacationing in a small group with Mr. Cheney and taking things of value, Justice Scalia created an appearance of bias in Mr. Cheney’s favor.” The newspaper pointed to Scalia’s free ride on Air Force Two.
Such commentary and public criticism only made Scalia more insistent. He said if he recused himself, he would appear to be yielding to the pressure. He thought that, in itself, would damage the court.
“Since I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned, I do not think it would be proper for me to recuse,” Scalia wrote.
“Recusal would in my judgment harm the Court,” he added. “… The people must have confidence in the integrity of the Justices, and that cannot exist in a system that assumes them to be corruptible by the slightest friendship or favor, and in an atmosphere where the press will be eager to find foot-faults.”
Yet reactions to Scalia’s decision would likely have intensified if the public had been aware of the difference Scalia made to hear Cheney’s appeal.
New York University ethics professor Stephen Gillers, a critic of Scalia at the time, told CNN recently, “The more influential he is on behalf of Cheney’s interests, given Cheney’s governmental and personal interests in the case, and Scalia’s friendship, and the timing of the trip, it makes the Scalia activity behind the scenes all the more reprehensible.”
When lower courts refused to block the document request related to the National Energy Policy Development Group, George W. Bush administration lawyers skipped over the usual procedural steps and asked for relief from the Supreme Court. Administration lawyers contended judges were encroaching on executive authority even at a preliminary stage when no court determination had been made regarding what documents tied to the task-force participants would have to be released.
Challengers were seeking records of who met with the task force. Critics said the panel had been influenced by oil and gas executives; among the panel’s recommendations favoring the industry was to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.
Most of the justices initially voted to deny the petition; Stevens’ scratchy, partial notes from one of their private sessions suggest jurisdiction was a stumbling block. (No other justices’ files from this period are publicly available.)
Stevens’ materials include the record of a private conference on November 26, 2003. They show seven initial votes against taking the case and a “Cert denied” notation, which appears to have been planned for an announcement on December 1, 2003. But that notation has a line through it and additional markings indicating that Scalia twice asked that the case be reconsidered.
Scalia himself may have expressed some early ambivalence. Stevens’ notations suggest only he and Justice Anthony Kennedy were ready to grant the case at the first private session.
What’s certain is that Scalia made his desire known on December 11, 2003, when he wrote in a private note to colleagues, “I relisted this case to consider whether the Vice President’s petition for certiorari is jurisdictionally proper. I have concluded that it is.”
Scalia faulted the district court’s determination against Cheney and an appellate court’s refusal to intercede to stop the document process known as discovery.
He also addressed the deeper merits of the issue, saying it raised important concerns about the separation of powers. “(T)he lower courts’ disposition threatens to embarrass the Executive in the exercise of its constitutional duties,” Scalia wrote. “Moreover, the interest of the Executive in protecting against intrusion into internal affairs will be irretrievably lost if discovery is allowed.”
Scalia, who became friends with Cheney while working in the Gerald Ford administration, was a strong proponent of executive power.
The day after Scalia wrote the memo, when the justices met in another private session, enough shifted their votes to grant the case, and the order was made public on December 15. Oral arguments were eventually scheduled for April.
The document dispute burst into a major national news story when it became known that Scalia had gone duck hunting with Cheney in Louisiana soon after the case was granted.
The trip was in early January 2004 and, Scalia later said, had been planned since the previous summer. Details of their vacation were first reported in The Daily Review in Morgan City, Louisiana. Then the Los Angeles Times picked up the story, putting a spotlight on the potential conflict of interest and igniting nationwide interest.
Critics acknowledged that socializing among the branches was a fact of Washington life but contended that in this particular litigation, personally involving Cheney, the duck-hunting trip created at least an appearance of impropriety.
The Sierra Club motion for Scalia’s recusal emphasized that Cheney’s “own conduct is central to this case,” and that the vacation differed from the usual social contacts between the justices and executive branch officials.
After Scalia received the motion from the Sierra Club, he wrote a March 4 note marked “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL” to Stevens, asking him to review a draft of his statement refusing the request. “I would welcome your views on its form and substance – as well as on what you believe to be the proper course for me to take.”
Scalia’s draft does not differ substantially from the March 18 memorandum released to the public, although he toned down some sections.
In his publicly released statement, Scalia referred to a personal letter that Morrison, generally on good terms with Scalia, had written to him earlier, in October 2003, regarding a position Morrison was about to take at Stanford Law School.
“Two days before the brief in opposition to the petition in this case was filed, lead counsel for Sierra Club, a friend, wrote me a warm note inviting me to come to Stanford Law School to speak to one of his classes. … I saw nothing amiss in that friendly letter and invitation. I surely would have thought otherwise if I had applied the standards urged in the present motion.”
As he first penned the draft statement, Scalia wanted to attach that “Dear Nino” letter. He was also harsher in his characterization of the situation. “If they thought me so readily corruptible, surely their lead counsel would not have written me a warm note (copy appended), dated two days before his filing of the Brief in Opposition to the Petition, inviting me to come to Stanford Law School to speak to one of his classes.”
Scalia made other changes, but his bottom line was the same: “If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.”
No correspondence indicating what Stevens thought of Scalia’s draft was in the case file. Scalia had told him he wanted to meet privately in Stevens’ office. On the core legal issue, however, Stevens appeared concerned about executive prerogatives. In another memo, Stevens expressed fear about the breadth of the potential discovery, referring at one point to the challengers’ “fishing expedition.”
After the April 2004 oral arguments, the justices voted 7-2 to throw out the lower court’s decision and send the case back for judges to reconsider whether any disclosure of participant records should be released.
“This is not a routine discovery dispute,” Kennedy wrote for the majority, saying the requests were directed to the vice president and other senior officials who served in the group to give advice to the president. “As we have already noted, special considerations control when the Executive Branch’s interests in maintaining the autonomy of its office and safeguarding the confidentiality of its communications are implicated.”
Scalia declined to write separately but signed a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas further in favor of Cheney. Thomas said the district court that initially ruled for the challengers exceeded its authority. Thomas, joined by Scalia, would have outright reversed and ended the litigation over the documents.
Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented in the case known as Cheney v. US District Court for the District of Columbia. Ginsburg then took the rare step of reading a portion of her dissenting opinion from the bench.
She faulted her colleagues for intervening and insisted the DC Circuit already was mindful of the separation of powers concerns. “As the Court of Appeals suggested, discovery could be kept down to two issues, did persons other than federal officials participate in the energy policy group, and if so, to what extent?”
The answers remained elusive for years after the task force submitted its recommendations in May 2001. The General Accounting Office had said in a 2003 report that it was thwarted because Cheney refused to turn over information.
In 2007, however, the Washington Post obtained a confidential Bush administration list that showed that Cheney and his aides had met with several industry executives, including top officers of Enron and Exxon Mobil, as the task force was developing its recommendations.
Some of the names had leaked over time. But, as the Post noted, the Supreme Court’s decision shielding the Cheney task force had ensured that most were kept secret.