IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE, ETC.
 
Here we now have two of the most eminent legal minds in the country - one of them a Supreme Court Justice - falling back on that old and utterly unacceptable excuse for wrong doing: ignorance of the law.
 
It seems that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Insight magazine reported recently, failed to recuse herself from 21 - count em' 21 - cases involving companies her husband had invested in. Martin D. Ginsburg, blames it all on his own "mistake."
 
"Until reading the Insight article I had not appreciated that stocks held in an IRA account managed by a third party professional raised the concern that Insight has highlighted," he said in a written statement. He insists he alone is responsible, that his wife has "never seen the fund"; but he offered no explanation for how she could have been ignorant of the stock holdings after signing two financial dislosure forms that detailed the holdings.
 
Now, no one is suggesting that Justice Ginsburg deliberately chose not to recuse so that she could rule on cases in a way that would benefit her husband's IRA. Indeed, in the one case not decided by secret vote, she voted against the company. But, the law dictates that federal judges recuse themselves if their "impartiality might reasonably be questioned" or when the judge, a spouse of a minor child living at home "has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy."
 
That very cleary applies here, and Martin and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, two of the country's leading attorney's, ought to have known that. Failing that, they ought to have made it their business to find out, and to take conflict of interest on the Supreme Court as seriously as it deserves to be taken.
 
07/11/97
 
 

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