Archive | Judicial Conduct

Last month, Rep. Louise Slaughter, Common Cause, and the Alliance for Justice filed an ethics complaint against Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit claiming that she had violated the Code of Conduct for federal judges by speaking at the annual dinner of the Federalist Society.  A similar complaint, […]

David Lat has a report on a recent talk that Chief Judge Alex Kozinski gave at Yale Law School. It sounds like it was quite an interesting event, as almost all Kozinski events are. And for those readers who remember my post last month about the oral arguments in United States v. Maloney, Lat reports: […]

That’s what happened in In re Kendall (V.I. Oct. 12, 2011); here’s the offending opinion by the trial judge. The criminal contempt finding is also partly based on the trial judge’s decision to recuse himself from the case, which the higher court said was based on the judge’s desire to avoid following the higher court’s […]

I recently came across a new Fourth Circuit decision on a very interesting legal question addressed in an unpublished decision. In United States v. Makwana, the Fourth Circuit considered the proper interpretation of one of the provisions of the United States Sentencing Guidelines — §2B1.1(b)(14)(B)(i) , which gives a sentencing enhancement for an offense that […]

As co-blogger Eugene Volokh notes, the Oklahoma Judicial Ethics Advisory Panel recently issued an opinion holding that it is unethical for judges to be Facebook “friends” with lawyers who appear before them. Back in 2009, I criticized a similar opinion issued by the Florida Judicial Ethics Committee: At first glance, it might seem as if […]

“It is often surprising, disarming and, when delivered with precision, highly effective.” So writes Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, in an order dismissing a complaint of judicial misconduct against (apparently) Magistrate Judge Edward Chen. Here’s the full order: A pro se litigant charges that a judge made public comments that violated the Code of Conduct for […]

David Zaring links to the abstract of an interesting study that suggests judges who have daughters rule differently in cases involving “women’s issues.”  Here’s the abstract: Social scientists have long maintained that women judges might behave different than their male colleagues (e.g., Boyd et al. (2010)). This is particularly true when it comes to highly […]

The Senate has just convicted federal district Judge Thomas Porteous, whose trial concluded yesterday, on all four articles of impeachment against him. The votes ranged from 69-27 to 96-0. The Senate unanimously convicted Porteous on Article I, which focused on his corruption in taking kickbacks from a law firm involved in a case he presided […]

It hasn’t made too many national headlines. But today the Senate began to hear the impeachment trial of Louisiana federal district Judge Thomas Porteous: The attorney for a federal judge facing removal from office argued Tuesday at a rare Senate impeachment trial that Congress is pursuing vague and unconstitutional charges against his client and would […]