We’ve commented before on the oil ties of Judge Martin Feldman, the Reagan-appointed federal judge who struck down President Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Now Alliance for Justice has issued a full report on his financial relationship with the energy sector and his refusal to recuse himself from the case. The results are damning. In 2008, for example, Judge Feldman reported energy-related financial holdings valued between $15,000 and $545,000, with a realized income of between $27,000 and $100,500. And yet, despite a statute that specifically requires recusal when a Justice has even a slight financial interest in a case, Judge Feldman did not step aside in the moratorium case. As Nan Aron, the President of Alliance for Justice, said:

Even the most cursory look at his personal financial holdings would lead any reasonable person to say he can’t possibly hear this case and stay within the formal rules of recusal, to say nothing of common-sense notions of bias.

Not only does Judge Feldman stand to make a profit from deciding on big oil’s behalf. He also, like conservative-appointed justices across the country, seems eager to impose a pro-corporate ideology on our legal system. It’s judicial activism like this that makes it so crucial to ensure that judicial appointments are part of the conversation during senatorial and presidential elections.