ON JULY 15, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals issued its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld affirming the power of the president to designate the trial of enemy combatants by military commissions. Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts was a member of the unanimous three-judge panel which decided the case.

Flying mostly beneath the coverage of Roberts has been a dubious ethics charge floated by three law professors–most prominently Professor Stephen Gillers of New York University Law School–last month in Slate. According to Gillers, Roberts should have recused himself from the panel because of interviews with administration officials contemporaneous with the progress of the Hamdan appeal. (A Newsday story on July 21 was the first to raise the recusal question. Tom Brune followed up with additional Newsday stories on August 18 and August 25.)