Pegasus Research Consortium

no this isn't really anything new but these GOOD religious men totally piss me off



Scalia ..only one of many



http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scalia-led-court-in-taking-trips-funded-by-private-sponsors/ar-BBq2jPA?li=BBnb7Kz
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON
1 day ago


WASHINGTON — Antonin Scalia was the longest-tenured justice on the current Supreme Court and the country's most prominent constitutionalist. But another quality also set him apart: Among the court's members, he was the most frequent traveler, to spots around the globe, on trips paid for by private sponsors.

When Justice Scalia died two weeks ago, he was staying, again for free, at a West Texas hunting lodge owned by a businessman whose company had recently had a matter before the Supreme Court.

Though that trip has brought new attention to the justice's penchant for travel, it was in addition to the 258 subsidized trips that he took from 2004 to 2014. Justice Scalia went on at least 23 privately funded trips in 2014 alone to places like Hawaii, Ireland and Switzerland, giving speeches, participating in moot court events or teaching classes. Just a few weeks before his death, he was in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Many of the justices are frequent expenses-paid travelers, a practice that some court scholars say is a minor matter, given that many of the trips involve public talks that help demystify the court. But others argue that the trips could potentially create the appearance of a conflict of interest, particularly when the organizations are known for their conservative or liberal views. Some groups at times use the presence of a Supreme Court justice as a way to pull in members or other paying guests.

"I am worried about the public perception of gratitude, even if there is no effect on your behavior," said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law who specializes in legal ethics. "And the greater the luxury, the greater the risk of public suspicion."

Ethical standards prohibit judges from accepting gifts from anyone with a matter currently before the court. But those guidelines presented no barrier to John Poindexter, who invited Justice Scalia to stay at his West Texas ranch.

Mr. Poindexter is the owner of J. B. Poindexter & Co., a manufacturing firm based in Houston with more than 4,000 employees. One of his companies, the Mic Group, was a defendant in an age discrimination lawsuit filed by a former employee who unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court for a review last year.

Mr. Poindexter, according to a former general manager at the ranch, is also a leader in a group known as the International Order of St. Hubertus, a worldwide organization of hunters, as, apparently, were several other guests during Justice Scalia's visit. The Washington Post first reported the guests' ties to the hunting group.

Mr. Gillers and other legal experts said they saw nothing wrong with Mr. Scalia's accepting a free room at Mr. Poindexter's lodge. While the Ethics in Government Act, adopted after Watergate, requires high-level federal employees, including judges, to fill out disclosure reports for reimbursements worth more than $335, the visit to the ranch might not have required a formal disclosure, because accommodations provided by a private individual are exempt under current rules.

But Gabe Roth, the executive director of an organization called Fix the Court, said that the Supreme Court needed a formal vetting process for privately funded trips, similar to the one used by Congress, where ethics committees sign off on trips before lawmakers take them.

"This is just part of the pattern of a lack of transparency from the high court," he said. "It is impossible to tell if there is a specific breach of any conflict of interest laws."

After Justice Scalia, the second most active traveler on the current court is Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who took 185 privately paid trips from 2004 to 2014, according to a database built by the Center for Responsive Politics, based on individual reports filed by the justices.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., based on a yearly average, had the fewest of these privately funded trips — a total of 48 from 2005 to 2014, the last year for which records are available. Over all, Supreme Court members disclosed 1,009 paid trips between 2004 and 2014.

The destinations often are luxurious, including the Casa de Campo Resort in the Dominican Republic, where Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was listed as a speaker for an event last February, or Zurich, where Justice Scalia traveled at least three times on privately funded trips.

In 2011, a liberal advocacy group, Common Cause, questioned whether Justice Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas should have disqualified themselves from participating in the landmark Citizens United case on campaign finance because they had attended a political retreat in Palm Springs, Calif., sponsored by the conservative financier Charles G. Koch. Mr. Koch funds groups that could benefit from the ruling.

The disclosure report filed by Justice Thomas made no mention of the retreat. It said only that he had taken a trip, funded by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, to Palm Springs to give a speech.

Over roughly a decade, Justice Scalia took 21 trips sponsored by the Federalist Society, to places like Park City, Utah; Napa, Calif.; and Bozeman, Mont. The Federalist Society also paid for trips by Justice Alito during that period, but not for any liberal justices, the disclosure reports show.

"There are fair questions raised by some of these trips about their commitment to being impartial," said Stephen Spaulding, the legal director at Common Cause. "They are dancing so close to the line with overtly political events."

Legislation is pending in the House and the Senate that would require the Supreme Court to create a formal ethics system, beyond the Ethics in Government Act, similar to the one that governs actions of all other federal judges. That system is known as the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.

Chief Justice Roberts has argued that the Supreme Court, even though it generally abides by this judicial ethics code, is not obligated to do so. It restricts how much judges can be paid for private travel, and limits other activities outside the court, such as allowing private organizations to use "the prestige of judicial office" for fund-raising purposes.

"The questionable activities of some of our Supreme Court justices have been well documented," including "participating in political functions," Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said in a statement explaining why she introduced the legislation last year. She was referring to the trips by Justices Scalia and Thomas to the events sponsored by Mr. Koch.

But Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, said that liberal groups' focus on the trips simply offered them an avenue to criticize conservative justices when in fact they had done nothing wrong.

"They are creating an ethics issue to try to put pressure on justices to get them to rule a certain way," he said.

The disclosure reports show that the majority of the privately funded trips — by far — are sponsored by universities, both in the United States and around the world.

Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said that society could benefit when justices — who are paid about $250,000 a year, far less than they would earn in private practice — leave Washington to speak about how the court works.

"It makes the opaque court more transparent and explains what is going on," he said.

In a new study, Dr. Hasen also found that in part through their travel, justices have increasingly gained a celebrity status, with websites like SCOTUS Map  tracking their trips, based on public announcements, long before they show up in any disclosure report.

"Justice Sonia Sotomayor runs into Hillary Clinton at a Costco, and that makes national news," Dr. Hasen said. "Now they are celebrities, so we just hear about them more."

Follow The New York Times's politics and Washington coverage on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.




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http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/scalias-death-prompts-dow-to-settle-suits-for-dollar835-million/ar-BBq4whm?li=BBnb7Kz

Bloomberg
Jef Feeley and Greg Stohr
8 hrs ago


vid at link

Dow Chemical Co. said it agreed to pay $835 million to settle an antitrust case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court after Justice Antonin Scalia's death reduced its chances of overturning a jury award

Dow, the largest U.S. chemical maker by sales, said Friday the accord will resolve its challenges to a $1.06 billion award to purchasers of compounds for urethanes, chemicals used to make foam upholstery for furniture and plastic walls in refrigerators.

The Midland, Michigan-based company disputed a jury's finding it had conspired with four other chemical makers to fix urethane prices and asked the Supreme Court to take the class-action case on appeal. Scalia, one of the court's most conservative members, had voted to scale back the reach of such group suits.

"Growing political uncertainties due to recent events with the Supreme Court and increased likelihood for unfavorable outcomes for business involved in class-action suits have changed Dow's risk assessment of the situation," the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Scalia's Absence

Scalia's death is likely to make it harder for companies to get the five votes they need to overturn awards or get new restrictions on class actions. He had been a key voice for companies in challenging group suits at the Supreme Court.

Scalia wrote the 5-4 ruling in 2011 that said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. couldn't be sued by potentially a million female workers. Two years later, Scalia was the author of a 5-4 ruling that freed Comcast Corp. from having to defend against an $875 million antitrust lawsuit on behalf of Philadelphia-area customers.

"Class-actions is one of the areas where Justice Scalia's absence is likely to have an impact," said Gregory Garre, an appellate lawyer at Latham & Watkins in Washington and previously President George W. Bush's top Supreme Court lawyer. "Companies will have to be careful what they ask for in seeking review, or at least face an added burden in prevailing at the court on class-action issues."

'Political Philosophy'

"Companies whose positions are based more on political philosophy than on interpretation of the law worry when the majority philosophy in sway at the court changes," said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's business and law schools who teaches classes on mass torts and class-action cases.

"It is unlikely that any nominee will be as favorable to business as Justice Scalia was," Gordon said in an e-mail. "The anti-business wing will carry more decisions."

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, bowed out of consideration Thursday as Scalia's replacement on the court. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has vowed that any nominee pushed forward by President Barack Obama won't get a confirmation vote this year. McConnell says the next president should make the appointment.

'Marginal Difference'

Some appellate lawyers say the court won't change much on class actions, regardless who makes the selection.

"I think it's only a marginal difference," said Jonathan Hacker, who runs the Supreme Court practice at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington. "Overall I think most justices want to ensure that class-action procedures permit defendants to litigate their defenses fairly and don't subject absent class members to unfair outcomes they can't control or even influence."

The settlement in the Dow case resolves the largest U.S. court award for 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That year, a federal-court jury in Kansas City, Kansas, awarded urethane purchasers $400 million in damages over claims that Dow engaged in price fixing. The judge in the case tripled the award to $1.2 billion as required by antitrust law.

The case started in 2005 with allegations that Dow plotted with BASF SE, Huntsman International LLC and Lyondell Chemical Co. in violation of federal law. Dow was the only company that refused to settle. The final judgment in the case was reduced to reflect $139 million in settlements with the other defendants before trial.

Dow's Defense

Dow appealed the liability finding and award to a federal appeals court in Denver, which rejected its challenges to the class-action claims in September 2014. The company asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court's ruling.

Dow disputes that it was part of a price-fixing conspiracy even though it agreed to resolve the case. The jury award "was fundamentally flawed as a matter of class-action law," the company said in its statement.

The Supreme Court has been holding Dow's appeal while it considers similar issues in a Tyson Foods Inc. case. Tyson is seeking to overturn a $5.8 million wage award to workers at an Iowa pork-processing plant. The company argues that it was subjected to an improper "trial by formula" and that the class of workers included some who were fully compensated.

Tyson got a skeptical audience from the justices during arguments in November. The justices suggested they might issue a narrow ruling, potentially upholding the award while limiting its reasoning to the wage-and-hour hour context. The Dow appeal raised broader questions about group lawsuits, arguing the award violated both the Constitution and the federal courtroom rules that govern class actions.

In December, Dow and DuPont Co. agreed to a merger of equals, the largest combination ever in the chemical industry. The companies have a combined market value exceeding $106 billion, based on current trading.

The deal is scheduled to close by the end of this year, after which three separate companies focused on plastics, agricultural products and specialty materials will be spun off to shareholders.

The antitrust case is In re Urethane Antitrust Litigation, 04-md-01616, U.S. District Court, District of Kansas (Kansas City).

--With assistance from Margaret Cronin Fisk Andrew Harris Mike Dorning and Jack Kaskey To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net, Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Sophia Pearson, Charles Carter

©2016 Bloomberg L.P.



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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-scalia-spent-his-last-hours-with-members-of-this-secretive-society-of-elite-hunters/2016/02/24/1d77af38-db20-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

By Amy Brittain and Sari Horwitz February 24

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 12 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.

After Scalia's death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia's connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown.
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