Roberts: $1.6 million stock in Time Warner, Microsoft, Pfizer, Merck

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

This shit keeps getting better and better.

Little Baby Jesus John Roberts may have to "sit out some cases" because of his "extensive" stock portfolio.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050829/ts_usatoday/stockholdingscouldholdbackrobertsonsomecases

John Roberts, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, could wind up sitting out important cases that come before the court because of his extensive stock holdings, legal ethics experts say.

Federal law is clear: Judges may not participate if they, their spouses or their minor children own stock in a company that is a party to a case, although at the Supreme Court, how the rule is applied is up to each justice. (Related story: Justices can skip cases but prefer not to)

Roberts owns $1.6 million in stock in companies such as Time Warner, Microsoft, Pfizer and Merck, which regularly have cases before the federal appeals courts. It's a problem that brought regular criticism for Sandra Day O'Connor, the justice Roberts has been nominated to replace. She took herself out of the action on at least 729 decisions in which she had potential financial conflicts, choosing to do so rather than divest her portfolio of the conflicting stocks, said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington attorney who practices regularly before the court and watches it closely.

Justices can avoid conflicts by putting assets in a blind trust, in which a financial manager makes investment decisions without the knowledge of the investor, or by transferring them to mutual funds, where the investor has no control over which stocks are bought. Roberts has given no hint whether he'll do that, but the issue is likely to come up at his Senate confirmation hearings, which begin Sept. 6.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. He also owned a lot of Dot-coms,

so he probably lost a considerable amount beginning in 2000.

For the record I own stock in the some of the companies you mentioned.

[Yupster]

2. He'll just get a blind trust

Or he could sell the stocks.

[MeatLoafZero]

3. Does anyone know

if any of those companies have been before the SCOTUS?