WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether Vice President Dick Cheney must disclose names of industry officials who helped him draft the Bush administration's energy policy in 2001.
Without comment, the court agreed to hear Cheney's appeal of a federal judge's order that he give the names and other records to a pair of public interest groups, the conservative Judicial Watch and the liberal Sierra Club. The groups sued Cheney, prompting the federal judge's order. It has been upheld by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The case obliges the court again to consider "executive privilege," an old but still fuzzy legal doctrine that presidents since George Washington have used to justify withholding information from Congress and private citizens.
The concept is not mentioned in the Constitution but has been inferred from the separation of powers among the federal government's three branches.
Presidents have argued that the confidentiality is necessary as they gather the advice needed to do their job.
Cheney has asserted that the information about the energy task force is protected by the privilege because President Bush asked him to form it.
"Legislative power and judicial power cannot extend to compelling the vice president to disclose . . . the details of the process by which a president obtains information and advice from the vice president," Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in asking the court to hear the case.
The public interest groups counter that the government is delaying to avoid embarrassment. Disgraced former Enron CEO Ken Lay was reported to have been one of Cheney's advisers.
The group's report, which recommended that industry-friendly programs such as more drilling for oil and gas on public lands, was severely criticized by environmental groups. Cheney himself is a former energy industry official, having served as chief executive of Halliburton, an energy and construction company, from 1995 to 2001.
In past rulings, the court has decided that executive privilege is not absolute. In 1974, the court required President Richard Nixon to give a grand jury tapes of White House conversations about his knowledge of the Watergate coverup. The court ruled that Nixon's "generalized" interest in protecting private conversation was outweighed by law enforcement's need to investigate a crime. Nixon resigned four days after the tapes were released.
But the court has never decided whether the privilege extends to the vice president or to conversations with persons who are not government employees. In 1993, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allowed the Clinton White House to keep meetings of the president's health care task force quiet by ruling that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the task force's chair, was a government employee.
The Supreme Court also took these actions Monday:
Ruled that police can arrest all occupants of a car when drugs are found during a traffic stop and no one claims ownership.
Lifted a last-minute stay that had spared a condemned Texas inmate from the death chamber. The court decided 5-4 to allow Texas to resume plans to execute a man who had challenged one of the drugs used to carry out the death penalty.
Said it would decide if U.S. courts can be used to settle foreign companies' claims that some large drug manufacturers conspired to fix vitamin prices worldwide. Five foreign companies that purchased vitamins want to use U.S. antitrust laws to pursue billions of dollars in damages.
Agreed to intervene in a two-decade-old fight over allowing Mexican trucks and buses on U.S. roadways. The court said it will hear an appeal from the Bush administration, which wants to open the border to Mexican trucks without a court-ordered environmental study.
Contributing: Associated Press.