Stevens understood the meaning of ethics. The right wingers never have apparentrly: This isn’t the first time Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas have faced pressure to recuse themselves from cases over the activities of their relatives, their relationships with involved parties or their financial interests. Newly released and previously unreported court documents that belonged to Justice John Paul Stevens, who led the marble palace’s liberal wing, show just how aware the justices were of charges that the appearance of impropriety could shake the public’s faith in the institution. They also show just how quick they were to push back against these concerns. The Library of Congress opened the papers to the public on May 2. The issues the justices wrestled with back then echo the controversies engulfing the court today. Although the court often puts up a united front in public, the documents provide a rare glimpse into its inner workings and show that at least one justice — Stevens — found Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s rationale for not recusing himself from a major case to be insufficient. Let’s go to the archives … In 1998, the Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the software giant of wielding a monopoly over the personal computer business. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Rehnquist faced a conundrum: His son, James C. Rehnquist, was a partner at a law firm and was working on “private antitrust cases” for Microsoft, as Chief Justice Rehnquist later publicly wrote. The question was whether…