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Selective application of judicial temperment

Justice Scalia is taking criticism for, inter alia, saying that if a person is captured on a battlefield he deserves to be in a POW camp such as Gitmo, when Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, challenging the Gitmo detentions, is before the Court.

My friend Bob Dowlut points out an interesting event In the Qulici v. Morton Grove case, decided by the 7th Circuit.

Judge Bauer, who wrote the opinion, went on Miller's Court [a tv program] before the case was argued and decided. Bauer said on the tv program he would uphold the handgun ban. He was asked by motion to recuse himself -- he'd not only commented on the merits, but announced his vote, prior to argument. There was no recusal. Bob noted this in his subsequent law review article, Federal and State Guarantees of the Right to Arms, 15 Univ. of Dayton Law Review 59 (1989), at page 70 footnote 77. Here's a link, altho the footnote formatting is imperfect.

As he points out, the media made no note of it. The case was just about gun owners, not about terrorists or other favored classes.