October 8, 2008

After years and even decades during which the Federal Trade Commission had reason to know there were big problems with its scoring for tar and nicotine, yet passively approved the continued use of the numbers, the commission and the Justice Department now claim to have been practiced upon by the wiles of the tobacco industry. Justice Alito termed the commission's position "incomprehensible", while Justice Scalia said, "When did the Commission know this stuff? I had a case when I sat on the Court of Appeals, so it had to be before 1984...It's been general knowledge for a long time, and the FTC has done nothing about it." More on the Altria Group v. Good argument at SCOTUSBlog and at Legal Times (Tony Mauro).