Our View: Officials' vote held in trust for people

Nevada's ethics law is not too broad, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week, overturning a previous ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court.

The law that requires lawmakers at all levels of government to recuse themselves when there is an issue they have a private interest in, isn't even unusual, the majority of the high court wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Nevada's law does not violate legislators' First Amendment rights, because a vote by a lawmaker as part of a commission, board or panel is not a right, it's a responsibility.

Lawmakers, whether they sit in Congress, the state Legislature, a city council, county commission or improvement district board, hold their vote in trust for the people.

"The legislative power thus committed is not personal to the legislator but belongs to the people; the legislator has no personal right to it," the opinion delivered by Antonin Scalia said.

According to the decision, nearly every state in the union has some law that require public officials to abstain in a conflict of interest.

Those laws are as old as the republic, having been promulgated with the first Congress.

"In a case so contrary not only to the laws of decency, but to the fundamental principles of the social compact, which denies to any man to be a judge in his own case, it is for the honor of the house that this rule, of immemorial observance, should be strictly adhered to," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1801 when he was President of the Senate.

Because for us to have faith in our government, the governed must expect decisions to be based on what's best for the republic, not what's best for their cronies.