Of course, no mention was made that "Nino" was caught practically with his pants down, at a rancho with personnel speaking only Spanish (not to understand anything that was said by important guests in English, presumably), and where he arrived, on Valentine's Day weekend, without his wife of 55 years, mother of his 9 children.
Nor was it mentioned that "Nino" arrived (or his body was brought after death) to that rancho right after his privately sponsored trip to Hong Kong and Singapore.
In other countries, public officials are not allowed to have gifts in kind in the form of privately sponsored international trips - but in the U.S., SCOTUS judges consider themselves Gods with no authority over them, and do whatever they want.
It was reported also that Scalia's family will be supervising public access to records generated by Scalia during his taxpayer-funded tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
It is very apparent that Scalia's family has no authority to:
- have access to the SCOTUS papers that the public is not allowed to see;
- regulate public access to such papers.
Moreover, materials regarding Scalia's tenure on these two courts will reportedly not be available for access through Harvard Law School - and that is NOT the equivalent of public access - until 2020, and materials regarding specific cases will not be available until all participating judges die off.
Right now we have 8 remaining judges, many of them quite young, and life expectancy of U.S. Supreme Court judges is towards the 90s.
That decision means that several private individuals, the so-called "Scalia family", without any authority, blocks access to public records created by a public servant as part of his taxpayer-backed job during not only the remaining lifetime of the currently sitting justices, but during the remaining lifetime of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, voters and taxpayers, which is completely unacceptable.
The decision of the Scalia family (and some of Scalia's children are lawyers) to not embarrass the sitting judges of the U.S. Supreme Court by exposing the "kitchen" of how the SCOTUS decisions were cooked - as likely reflected in Scalia's papers, "notes" and "journals" about cases - "notes" and "journals" that the Scalia family, who are not employees of the court, already saw - has no basis in law.
Public servants have NO RIGHT TO AVOID EMBARASSMENT FOR EXPOSURE OF THEIR MISCONDUCT OR IMPROPRIETY.
Public servants, and their families, no matter how high their rank, have no right of ownership whatsoever as to documents created as part of or in connection with Scalia's employment as a judge, no right to place such records into the hands of private corporations, such as Harvard Law Schools, no right to place records outside of the reach of the public, into a private institution, no right to supervise or control who and how accesses the record, and no right to block access to those records to prevent potential embarrassment of the currently sitting judges.
Harvard Law School must put these public records into the Library of the U.S. Congress, as a public receptacle of public records, maintained with public funds and giving access to the public to review records created by public servants during their publicly funded jobs.
These records have ALREADY been made public, by Scalia showing them to its family who are not confidential employees of the U.S. Supreme Court, and by the Scalia family placing those records into the hands of Harvard Law School librarians, who are also not confidential employees of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since such documents were already exposed to people who are not personnel of the U.S. Supreme Court, they were made public - and should be kept in a public library and free public access to them should be allowed.
Now.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete