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Today in the Supreme Court lawyers for former Enron executive Jeff Skilling argued that the federal law criminalizing depriving someone "of the intangible right of honest services," one of the laws under which Skilling was convicted in 2006, was unconstitutionally vague and should be thrown out.

Skilling's lawyer told the Justices that the "honest services" law applies so broadly that it must fall under the Constitution's prohibition against vague laws. The lawyer, Sri Srinivasan, gave the example of an employee who uses office computers for personal use, contrary to an office policy against personal use. Srinivasan asked whether that is a violation of federal law, prompting Chief Justice John Roberts to respond that the law may be broad, but it is not vague.

The Justices overall seemed much more interested in Skilling's challenge to the method by which his jury was picked, possibly because the Court heard arguments about "honest services" in two cases this past December. When the jury was picked for Skilling's trial, each potential juror was asked to complete a 14-page questionnaire, and some jurors were then questioned directly by the judge for an average of 4.5 minutes. Srinivasan argued that that a brief interview was not long enough to properly determine if jurors would be able to give Skilling a fair chance. In addition, Srinivasan pointed to several jurors who indicated they had some pre-existing opinions of Skilling on the form, but were not asked to explain why they felt they could still give Skilling a fair trial.

Several of the Justices, most notably Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, seemed to agree that there was something wrong with the trial judge's lack of follow-up, but all the Justices were hesitant to overrule an experienced trial judge who seemed to otherwise know what he was doing. Justice Sotomayor is the only sitting Justice who has served as a trial judge. Additionally, Justice Breyer did not seem to know what kind of future guidance the Court could give trial judges as to what kind of juror questioning is needed.

The Supreme Court will decide the case before its summer recess.