A bow to the presidency
With 'deference' granted to the executive branch, the public's right to know
is restricted.
By REGISTER EDITORIAL BOARD <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

June 25, 2004


Although the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to duck a decision in the legal
battle between environmental groups and Vice President Dick Cheney, the
court's ruling Thursday was a clear victory for the Bush administration. At
the very least, the court let the administration off the hook on this hot
potato issue for the remainder of this term.

This case has generated attention in part because it involves a battle for
access to records of the vice president's energy task force and in part
because of questions about Cheney's duck-hunting trip with Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia while Cheney's appeal was before the court.
Apart from those controversies, the legal battle over whether the Cheney
energy-policy task force was legally able to block public access to its
meetings and documents involves a classic constitutional struggle between
the courts and the executive branch.

Two groups, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, sued to force the White
House to release Cheney's task-force documents in an effort to determine how
much the process was influenced by energy producers. The Bush administration
petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to quash
the lawsuit as an unconstitutional or illegal intrusion on the executive
branch. That court denied the petition, allowing the lawsuit to go forward.
The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday sent the case back to the D.C. appeals court
with instructions that can be read only one way: You read the law
incorrectly in denying the administration's petition. As a result, it's
likely the appeals court will ultimately bring the case to a close.

Either way, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling means the case could be fought
for a year or more before it comes to a conclusion. In which case, it will
be a long time, if ever, before the public will find out just how much
influence energy producers had on the administration's energy policy.
Besides winning a reprieve, the administration won some ground back on the
question of executive privilege. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the
court, made it clear that the federal courts must exercise great deference
to the executive branch in a civil case such as this, unlike a criminal case
such as President Nixon faced during Watergate.

Thus, the groups fighting to open up the administration's deliberative
process to public scrutiny appear to have not only lost this case, but put
in motion a Supreme Court decision that will make it harder to do that in
future presidential administrations as well.

Tarah Heinzen
Sierra Club Conservation Organizer
3839 Merle Hay Road, Suite 280
Des Moines, IA 50310
(515) 251-3995
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