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SAMUELS: Tripping Up on Trips: Judges Love Junkets as Much as Tom DeLay Does 

it must be noted that Mr. DeLay's junket habit is something he has in common with the nation's judiciary, which he has criticized so many times for the wrong reasons. (Recall, for example, his threatening anti-judge screed in the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo case.) In 2000, the year of Mr. DeLay's lobbyist-financed St. Andrews trip, nearly 100 federal judges engaged in distressingly similar behavior. These judges attended all-expenses-paid private seminars for judges held at resorts offering excellent golf, tennis, skiing and spa services. The trips were underwritten by monied interests out to influence judges to rule in favor of corporate interests on issues like environmental protection and liability for harmful products.

Just as Mr. DeLay's Scotland trip with Mr. Abramoff was treated in official filings as privately sponsored "fact-finding," the judicial seminars are conducted under the innocuous-sounding banner of "judicial education." In reality, these slanted multiday sessions mock the ideal of an independent, impartial judiciary, and pose a threat to the appearance and reality of judicial integrity.

And it's not just judges from the lower federal courts who have deluded themselves into thinking that their trips will not undermine public trust. Just remember Justice Antonin Scalia's duck-hunting trip with Dick Cheney in 200 . . .

In September, Justice Scalia showed he'd learned little from the episode when he failed to attend the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. because he was teaching a seminar for the Federalist Society at the exclusive Beaver Creek ski area in Colorado. Justice Scalia permitted the society, an influential conservative legal group, to promote the event to lawyers, some of whom may have matters before the Supreme Court now or in the near future, as "a rare opportunity to spend time, both socially and intellectually," with a justice. The pitch had all the dignity and subtlety of a capital fund-raiser for a senior Ways and Means Committee member. . . .

Embarrassed by ethics scandals, the Republicans who run Congress seem poised to enact new lobbying reforms, including a crackdown on lobbyist-financed travel. While they are in cleanup mode, why don't they also bar special interests from wining and dining the judiciary? Although the rules for judges might wisely include a few separate wrinkles - like an overdue judicial pay raise or a small pot of money to underwrite real judicial educational programs - the basic principle is the same. Members of Congress should not be accepting compromising free trips or other gifts, and neither should federal judges.

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