Justices, 7-2, Reject Secrecy at Tax Court

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, March 7 - The Supreme Court rebuked the United States Tax Court on Monday for its adoption of a "bold" and unauthorized procedure that shields essential documents from disclosure to people with cases before the court and to federal judges who review the tax court's work on appeal.

A strongly worded 7-to-2 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was addressed to the tax court's use of "special trial judges," auxiliary judges who conduct trials and make recommendations to the 19 regular judges on how major tax cases should be decided.

Under the tax court's rules, while the recommendations of the special judges are not binding, their findings "shall be presumed to be correct," and the regular judges are expected to defer to them. The reports are therefore extremely important to the tax court's decision-making process, yet since 1983 the court has regarded them as confidential internal documents and has refused to make them available to the parties or to appellate judges.

Neither federal law nor the tax court's rules authorize such "concealment," Justice Ginsburg said, adding, "In comparison to the nearly universal practice of transparency in forums in which one official conducts the trial (and thus sees and hears the witnesses), and another official subsequently renders the final decision, the tax court's practice is anomalous."