Alabama AG Rallying to Massey, Benjamin

"Alabama Attorney General Troy King wants attorneys general around the country to join him in supporting West Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Brent Benjamin and Massey Energy in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court," The Charleston Gazette reports.

After a wide-ranging array of 48 different parties raised questions about Benjamin's refusal to recuse himself from the case, Massey has until Feb. 4 for "friend of the court" briefs supporting its position to be filed.

The Gazette explains that "Dan Schweitzer, a lawyer for the National Association of Attorneys General, e-mailed a memorandum on Friday morning outlining Troy's position to other attorneys general across the country."

The article quotes from the e-mail: "The amicus brief will argue that once a state has chosen its preferred method of selecting judges - whatever that method is - states should have the ability to police judicial participation through carefully constructed state recusal policies."

"In other words," the e-mail continues, "making recusal a federal issue by 'constitutionalizing' it is unnecessary and, as a practical matter, unwise."

Massey, however, has been seeking to make recusal a federal issue by "constitutionalizing" it since 2006, when it sued West Virginia's Supreme Court over its recusal rule. The federal lawsuit is pending, and sits on the U.S. District Court's inactive docket to await the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court appeal.