Leon Chiles (Joe Morton) mentions to McCoy "Madam Justice from Arizona" when discussing the expedited hearing at the Supreme Court. He is referring to U.S. Associate Supreme Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, appointed by President Reagan in 1981 and who retired in 2006.
Judge Busey tells Adam Schiff that he's "no John Sirica." John Sirica was the U.S. District Court Judge, who presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars and who later ordered President Nixon to hand over the secret White House Oval Office tape recordings, that helped prove the Watergate conspiracy.
This episode was inspired by the real-life case of Charles Horman, an American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in 1973 by Chilean military forces, while covering the U.S.-backed coup in Santiago, Chile, by General Augusto Pinochet. The story of Charles Horman, and of his father Ed Horman's search for his son, was told in the movie, Missing (1982), starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
The murder victim is found with the monogram R.O.T. on his shirt. A tribute to the character Roger O. Thornhill in the Alfred Hitchcock classic North by Northwest (1959). The monogram R.O.T. was also on Thornhill's matchbook cover and ends up being a key item in the movie.
"Vaya Con Dios" is Spanish for "Go with God."