A conspiracy theorist has his day in court.

I was prepared to witness the worst oral argument in history today. Allan J. Favish—an obsessive California conspiracy theorist who's been trying to get his hands on death-scene photographs of former Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster for almost a decade—is like every other zealot intent on arguing his own case before the high court: He's more interested in hogging the spotlight than in his legal claims. I'd practically written the " … fool for a client" concluding paragraph for this dispatch before I took my seat this morning.

But today's oral argument revealed more about the justices' obsessions than about Favish's. Even when he was practically invited by the court to spew his kooky conspiracy theories, Favish declined the invitation. In a case that will define the meaning of "privacy" and thus constrain the media, it was the justices doing the ranting.

Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in a Virginia park in July 1993. A close friend of the Clintons, he had been working on the Whitewater case, and his death spawned a hysterical loco-fest of speculation that still lives on the Internet: He'd been killed by the evil Clintons. (Hillary, although gay, was also his lover, the story goes.)

Whatever. Favish has been at it for years now, and if you really want to make him happy, you can check out his Web site for all the details on the alleged cover-up or his brief in the Supreme Court. His case began in 1997 when he filed his first request under the Freedom of Information Act for 150 photos of the Foster death scene and autopsy, hoping to prove Foster had been executed. The Office of the Independent Counsel refused, citing an exemption in FOIA for documents that need not be disclosed if they "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." The case was filed in California, and a second was filed in the District of Columbia. The California case has now been up to the 9^th Circuit, back to the district court, and back to the 9^th Circuit. What originated as a request for 150 photos has dwindled to a dispute over 10, after the OIC agreed to release most of them. The 9^th Circuit eventually found that five photos could be kept from Favish, reasoning that Foster's survivors have a privacy interest in keeping the grisliest of the shots from the public.

The OIC and Foster's family appealed that decision, arguing that Favish has no interest in the photos; they will tell him nothing about the alleged cover-up. Favish cross-appealed. He thinks those last five photographs are going to blow this case wide open. The sole question for the court—and it's an issue the justices have never addressed—is whether "privacy" under the FOIA exemption survives the dead and extends to his family.

Patricia Millett, an assistant to Solicitor General Ted Olson, argues for 20 minutes that this expansive view of privacy is appropriate. Justice Antonin Scalia wants to hold her to the narrowest definition of privacy, telling her that if Congress had been worried about families of the dead, legislators would have used the word "sensitivity" as opposed to "privacy" when they drafted FOIA. Millett urges that families have three privacy interests: in preserving their memories, in controlling the disposal of the remains, and in seclusion and closure.

Sandra Day O'Connor wonders what test the government proposes for overcoming the privacy exemption. Millett says it's not enough to have an "unsubstantiated assertion of government misconduct"; the FOIA requester needs to provide "clear evidence" that the government did something wrong. Scalia wonders if it needs to be a "willful cover-up" or if it's enough that there was government "sloppiness." Millett says you can't overcome the privacy exemption just because "someone can identify more that should have been done, or because they disagree with the result."

James Hamilton represents Foster's widow and sister, who also oppose the release of the photographs. Hamilton's 10-minute presentation is emotional, urging the court not to subject Foster's family to harrowing images in "grocery store tabloids and ghoulish Web sites." Scalia gives him a few moments, then asks him to balance that privacy interest against Favish's interest on the other side. "There is no interest on the other side," says Hamilton. "There have been five independent investigations of Foster's death. All have concluded it's suicide." He cites to the thousands of documents OIC has released, none of which has revealed Favish's smoking gun.

Scalia presses Hamilton on one of the documents cited as proof of the cover-up, the so-called "Haut Report" in which Favish claims the word "neck" was whited out by conspirators and replaced with the word "head" to cover-up the fact that Foster was shot in the neck, and didn't kill himself. Scalia, never afraid to call a wing nut a wing nut, tells Hamilton: "What he and other conspiracy theorists would say is that the fact that there were five investigations only shows the extent of the conspiracy."

Favish sits impassively as Scalia calls him a crackpot. And Hamilton keeps a straight face as he responds to Scalia's concern: "Yes, Judge Starr conspired with the members of the Clinton administration in order to protect that administration." Hoots from the gallery. Hamilton continues uninterrupted for a moment or two until Scalia proffers a better conspiracy theory: "Mr. Starr may have been protecting Newt Gingrich …"