The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on a judge that seems to have some trouble obeying the law and paying her fines. Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold has not paid more than $1,000 in fines and late fees for city of Cleveland traffic and parking tickets issued since 2006, records show. She owes […]
Archive | Judicial Conduct
Televised “Show Trial” on Proposition 8?
Over at NRO, Ed Whelan has been following some bizarre manuevering by the federal district court judge in the Northern District of California who apparently is trying to have a televised “show trial” regarding Proposition 8. Without getting into the merits of Proposition 8 or the legal challenges to it, I agree with Whelan that it seems […]
Do Blogs Influence Judicial Decisions?
J. Robert Brown considers the potential effect of legal blogging on judicial decisions. Any such influence would be difficult to quantify. Even when a judicial decision cites a blog, it is hard to know whether the blog in question actually influenced the case’s outcome. Nonetheless, there are occasional instances in which it is quite probable […]
Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Forbids Facebook “Friendships” Between Judges and Lawyers
The Florida Judicial Ethics Committee has issued an opinion forbidding judges to be Facebook “friends” with lawyers who may appear before them: Judges and lawyers in Florida can no longer be Facebook friends. In a recent opinion, the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee decided it was time to set limits on judicial behavior online. When […]
More judicial corruption in S.E. PA:
More depressing news from Wilkes-Barre, where a third local judge, and the 20th person overall, has been snagged in a corruption inquiry. I’ve blogged a number of times about the two other judges that will (hopefully) spend a good deal of time in prison on the charge of “honest services fraud for improperly influencing a […]
Are Judges Really Immune when Taking Kickbacks?
Earlier in the year I posted a story about a particularly revolting episode of judicial corruption in Eastern Pennsylvania. I wrote: Eastern Pennsylvania has a terrible reputation for judicial corruption and venality — the stories one hears from practitioners and others around Philadelphia are truly awful, with bags full of money and all the rest. […]