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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court appeared troubled Tuesday by the prospect of letting the public have a look into White House policy meetings, a hopeful sign for the Bush administration's defense of secrecy in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
The court is the latest stop in a nearly three-year fight over access to records of the task force that prepared a national energy strategy. The president put Cheney, a former energy industry executive, in charge, and the group's recommendations were friendly to industries.
Raising the gravest concerns about unnecessary snooping into the executive branch was Justice Antonin Scalia, who stayed in the case despite conflict-of-interest questions relating to his friendship with Cheney. He said a president has broad authority to keep matters private.
"He has the power as an independent branch to say, "No, this intrudes too much upon my powers. I will not do it,' " Scalia said.
Other justices expressed concerns about a ruling that would disrupt behind-the-scenes work of government.
At the same time, the court could disappoint the administration by deciding the case is premature for a ruling because the lower court that ruled against the Bush administration had not worked out which documents should be released.
The Bush administration argues privacy is important for candid White House discussions on difficult issues. It was sued by watchdog and environmental groups under a federal open-government law. The groups accused the administration of letting energy industry executives and lobbyists help write the task force policy.
Justices were told by lawyers for the suing groups that the public has a right to information about committees like Cheney's. Former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay and others were task force players, lawyers argued, but until the government produces records, it won't be clear if they drafted the government's policies.
A ruling will come before July.
During arguments, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned why the government was balking at the release of some records while giving out 36,000 pages from agencies on the same subject. "If the whole thing is so misguided, if the application of this (law) violates the separation of powers, why did the government respond to the requests for information from the agencies?" she asked.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the administration did not want to be unnecessarily confrontational so it cooperated with some requests.
Conservatives and some liberal justices seemed sympathetic to Olson's arguments.
Justice John Paul Stevens said there was nothing unusual about outsiders giving government advice, and Justice Stephen Breyer said the work that goes into most major policies involves dozens of meetings with "everyone under the sun."
Several justices questioned why the White House had not just refused to release information citing presidential executive privilege. Presidents contend that under the constitutional separation of powers, they can sometimes withhold information from the other two branches of government.