Vice President Dick Cheney has been arguing constitutional law in defending himself against a lawsuit brought by David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general and head of the congressional General Accounting Office. Mr. Walker wants to know the name of the industry executives who helped Mr. Cheney’s energy task force develop the Bush administration’s energy policy last year.

The constitutional issues are important. Which branch of government’s claim should prevail – the executive power to keep records confidential or the legislative right to investigate how public money is spent? Also, can the vice president ignore a request for information from the accounting office without a presidential exercise of executive privilege, a move that would be hard to justify?

But there is a political side to the dispute. When the task force was meeting with people from 150 corporations, trade associations, environmental groups and labor unions, everyone knew about energy industry pressure to drill for oil in the Alaskan reserve and to escape further regulation. And everyone knew about President Bush’s close personal and political relationship with Kenneth Lay, then president and chief executive officer of Enron.

Things have changed since then. Enron is in bankruptcy, and the net is closing on its top executives. Mr. Lay is under criminal and federal investigation. Michael Kopper has already taken a plea and is expected to testify against his former boss, former finance chief Andrew Fastow and others, possibly including Mr. Lay. And both Enron and the El Paso Corp. are under investigation for their alleged roles in California’s power crisis in 2000 and 2001, which sent energy prices sky high, bought rolling blackouts and drove major electric utilities into bankruptcy.

Manipulation of the market by Enron and other companies has been known a long time. Now an administrative judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that El Paso illegally inflated the price of natural gas by deliberately reducing the flow through its main pipeline into Southern California.

A ruling against Mr. Cheney in Walker v. Cheney may settle some important constitutional issues. It certainly would make clear where the administration got its energy advice.