Conflicts of Interest and the Supreme Court

STACLU has a post up accusing Justice Ginsburg of having a conflict of interest for ruling in a case involving the ACLU because she used to work as an attorney for them. Quoting another blogger, they ask the following question:

Is it proper that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg - a former attorney for the ACLU - to have actually ruled on a ACLU case before her? Isn't it a standard practice to recuse oneself when there is a conflict of interest - such as in the case of CJ John Roberts in the Haman (sic) case?

And then Jay goes on, as usual, to blather on about hypocrisy where none exists:

I know that Mac is being sarcastic in this question. While it seems like a common sense question on the surface, we all know the philosphy that the ACLU and its followers adhere to: "If standards are good, then double standards must be twice as good."

Simple answer: Yes, it is entirely proper that she rule in such a case, and it is not at all like Roberts and the Hamdan case. Roberts could not rule in the Hamdan case because he had already ruled in at at the appeals court level - he would be handling an appeal of his own ruling. Obviously, that is not allowed. But justices hear cases involving organizations they used to work for all the time. They even hear cases involving the people who appointed them to the court.

By their reasoning, wouldn't any justice (or lower court judge for that matter) who served in the DOJ, especially in the Solicitor General's office, have to recuse themselves from cases where the government is a party? That would be completely unworkable. A large number of Federal judges come from other government agencies, and they hear cases where those agencies are a party all the time. Did anyone claim that Clarence Thomas shouldn't hear any cases involving the first Bush administration because he was political appointee? If Gonzales had been nominated for the court, he would not have recused himself from cases where the DOJ was a party.

Recusals are left up to each individual justice to decide for themselves. There are no set rules on the matter, but as a general rule they only recuse themselves if they have a financial stake in the outcome, if it involves a relative, or if they had a track record of saying things that compromised their objectivity (and the last one is rare; the only time I can think of when that happened was when Scalia recused himself from the Newdow case because he had pretty much called him a nutball in a speech prior to hearing the case).

The bottom line is that there is no double standard here. Ginsburg would no more be expected to recuse herself from all cases involving the ACLU than Roberts or Alito would be expected to recuse themselves from hearing cases involving President Bush, since he gave them their position on the court.