This would be funny if the issue in question were not so serious.

Four Supreme Court justices recused themselves from a controversial case in which dozens of U.S. corporations that did business in South Africa are being sued for $400 billion on behalf of any South African who was injured by the white government's official system of harsh segregation from 1948 to 1996.

The case involves the Alien Tort Statute of 1789, a little-used and almost-forgotten law until activist human-rights lawyers began using it to go after repressive governments and the U.S. corporations that did business with them.

The nine-member high court needs a quorum of six justices to hear an appeal. With four justices sitting it out, the court had no choice but to punt the case back to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which earlier had ruled that the case could go forward.

The Bush administration is vehemently opposed to the lawsuit on the grounds it would dramatically expand the scope of U.S. law and do serious harm to U.S. interests overseas.

The justices did not explain their recusals, but it is undisputed that it was because three of the justices own stock in several of the corporations being sued and the fourth has a son who is a senior officer in one.

Financial-disclosure figures published by the Associated Press show that the justices don't own huge amounts of stock, certainly not compared with the holdings of rainmaking lawyers in private practice. Chief Justice John Roberts' holdings in Hewlett-Packard are listed as between $15,000 and $50,000.

But federal law says a judge must remove himself from a case even if he owns but a single share. It's not really fair to the judges, but it can't be any other way.

It's a pointless exercise to try to devise an amount beyond which a stock in a judge's portfolio rises to the level of a conflict of interest. Or to pinpoint the amount where an otherwise honest jurist might be subconsciously swayed in his decision.

In 2006, Congress allowed judges to sell their stocks and invest the proceeds in government securities or certain mutual funds without having to pay capital gains. This should satisfy most ethical objections to the judges' private holdings.

There's still time for them to act. If this case is the great legal blunderbuss it looks like, it will eventually find its way back to the Supreme Court.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)