To conclude that Amtrak's political accountability—remote as it is—removes the taint of any potential for bias would be a simple way to resolve this case. After all, legislators may legislate in pursuit of their own naked self-interest. Congress had to pass the STOCK Act just to put a stop to congressional insider trading.
See Tamara Keith,
How Congress Quietly Overhauled Its Insider–Trading Law, NPR, http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734. Those whose rights may be trammeled by legislators brazen enough to pursue their own economic self-interest “are protected in the only way that they can be in a complex society, by their power, immediate or remote, over those who make the rule.”
Bi–Metallic Inv. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 239 U.S. 441, 445, 36 S.Ct. 141, 60 L.Ed. 372 (1915) (Holmes, J.). In fact, our Constitution's ingenious system of checks and balances
assumes government officials will act self-interestedly. “Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good,” the very first installment of the
Federalist Papers opined. The Federalist No. 1, at 33 (C. Rossiter ed., 1961) (Hamilton). “But it is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected.”
Id. And as Alexander Hamilton observed elsewhere: “We may preach till we are tired of the theme, the necessity of disinterestedness in republics, without making a single proselyte.” Alexander Hamilton,
The Continentalist No. IV, in 3
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 99, 103 (Harold C. Syrett ed., 1962). Self-interested lawmaking was not some shocking aberration; it was an unwelcomed expectation, one our Constitution endeavored to channel and check.
See The Federalist No. 51, at 321–22 (Madison) (C. Rossiter ed., 1961) (“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”).