A trove of previously confidential documents has reignited questions about judicial ethics and the relationship between Justice Antonin Scalia and former Vice President Dick Cheney, revealing that Scalia’s involvement in a landmark 2004 Supreme Court case began far earlier than previously known.
On June 1, 2026, CNN published a report based on private papers from the late Justice John Paul Stevens, showing that Scalia actively lobbied his fellow justices to take up Cheney’s energy task force appeal in late 2003 — persuading the court to reverse its initial inclination to reject the case entirely. Within three weeks after the Supreme Court announced it would hear the matter, Scalia joined Cheney on a private duck hunting trip to Louisiana, sparking what became one of the most controversial judicial ethics disputes in modern history.
The disclosure comes seven months after Cheney’s death on November 3, 2025, at age 84 from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease. Richard B. Cheney, who served as the 46th vice president of the United States under President George W. Bush starting in 2001, died at home surrounded by family after a lifetime marked by five heart attacks and a heart transplant in 2012.
Behind the Scenes of a Landmark Ruling
The case at the center of the controversy stemmed from Cheney’s chairmanship of the National Energy Policy Development Group in 2001. The White House task force held closed-door meetings with energy industry lobbyists, prompting the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch to file suit demanding disclosure of who attended those sessions. The Bush administration resisted, claiming separation of powers protections.
The newly revealed materials from Stevens’ archive show that Scalia’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering preceded the duck hunting excursion that would later dominate headlines. After the Supreme Court agreed to take Cheney’s appeal, the Sierra Club formally demanded Scalia’s recusal based on the Louisiana trip. Scalia declined in a defiant 21-page memorandum, maintaining that he and Cheney never discussed the case and were never alone together during the outing.
The court ruled largely in Cheney’s favor in June 2004, permitting the administration to shield the task force’s internal deliberations from public view. But what remained hidden until now was that Scalia’s advocacy for hearing the case began before the court’s decision to grant review, raising fresh ethical concerns about the justice’s personal relationship with a party whose interests were directly at stake.
A Posthumous Reckoning
Cheney’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral on November 20, 2025, drew former President Joe Biden and other living vice presidents. Former President George W. Bush delivered a eulogy, having previously described Cheney’s death as a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends, calling him among the finest public servants of his generation — a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position he held. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were not invited, reflecting a rift that had grown over years.
That estrangement culminated in October 2024, when Cheney delivered a stunning crossover endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, declaring that Trump posed a threat to the Constitution and the rule of law. The endorsement represented one of the most extraordinary political reversals in modern American history.
Broader Implications for Supreme Court Reform
Stephen Gillers, a New York University ethics professor who criticized Scalia at the time of the original controversy, told CNN the Stevens documents intensified his concerns. The more influential he is on behalf of Cheney’s interests, given Cheney’s governmental and personal interests in the case, and Scalia’s friendship, and the timing of the trip, it makes the Scalia activity behind the scenes all the more reprehensible, Gillers said.
The revelations arrive as the Supreme Court completes its 2025–2026 term with a series of landmark rulings, including a June 2026 decision that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The court has faced mounting scrutiny over undisclosed gifts and relationships between justices and wealthy benefactors, making the Scalia-Cheney affair a potent historical parallel for contemporary ethics debates.
A Navigator Research survey published May 28, 2026 found that 74 percent of Americans support term limits for Supreme Court justices, and 70 percent back congressional investigations into potential ethics violations — both with bipartisan support. Though Scalia died in 2016 and Cheney is now gone, the questions their friendship raised about whether personal relationships can improperly influence judicial decisions remain unresolved, continuing to challenge public confidence in an institution whose authority rests on perceived impartiality.
