Congress explores options for SCOTUS ethics reform; new database for voter info in NY judicial elections
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Ongoing Fallout from Bankruptcy Judge’s Romantic Relationship with Attorney
In 2023, Texas U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones was rebuked by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately resigned from office after reports revealed that he was in a romantic relationship with a lawyer at a major Houston law firm. Some 3,500 cases had to be reassigned after his resignation, and the U.S. Department of Justice continues to seek the return of $23 million in fees paid to the firm in question.
The events leading to Jones’s resignation also have drawn attention to the decisions of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, who was assigned
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to decide a motion seeking Jones’s recusal in 2021 where questions about the potential relationship were raised. Jones and Isgur were close friends and former law partners, and Isgur appeared to refuse to explore whether there was evidence of a relationship that would have required recusal.
As Bloomberg Law noted
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, “Even in a district where conflicts of interest have drawn national attention, the specter of Jones’ longtime mentor sitting in judgment of the hometown ethics controversy strikes some observers as alarming.” The continued fallout from Jones and Isgur’s actions demonstrates the importance of judges maintaining high ethical standards, both in their own conduct and in their assessment of their ability to fairly judge the conduct of others.
Congress Explores Ways to Shore Up SCOTUS Ethics
On June 4, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), along with Reps. Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), introduced
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the Supreme Court Ethics and Investigations Act
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, the most recent in a series of bills Congress has pushed to address the ethics issues that have plagued the Supreme Court. Rather than changing the substance of ethics rules for the justices, however, these bills focus on the process of enforcing the rules.
Goldman’s bill
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would establish an Office of Ethics Counsel and an Office of Investigative Counsel to, respectively, provide ethics training or advice to justices and allow Congress to submit complaints over misconduct. “Our nation’s highest court is facing an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy because there is no enforceable code of ethics and no accountability to the fundamental norms required of all other judges,” said
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Goldman.
In recent months and years, lawmakers from both parties have introduced other bills with various proposals for creating investigation and enforcement mechanisms for Supreme Court ethics issues. One frequently discussed idea is to create an inspector general
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’s office tasked with investigating alleged misconduct within the federal judiciary, following a model that is commonly employed in many executive branch agencies.
Other proposals include directing the U.S. Judicial Conference
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(the policymaking body for the federal courts) or the Supreme Court itself
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to establish a process for receiving and handling complaints about justices’ ethical misconduct. Another proposal would create an investigations panel composed of chief judges of the circuit courts
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that would then make recommendations to the Supreme Court for how a complaint should be resolved. All these proposals ultimately leave the final decision about the complaint where it currently is — with the individual Supreme Court justice — but they would bring more transparency to the process.
New Public Resources on NY Judicial Candidates
In some states, judges are elected or nominated to run by the public. In most circumstances, however, it is difficult for the public to find independent sources of information about candidates running for judicial positions. In a time of substantial spending increases in many judicial elections and growing awareness of the importance of state judges, these information gaps are being filled in different ways.
In New York, Gothamist recently featured
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a database that judicial transparency advocacy organization Scrutinize created
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to share information on judicial candidates who are up for reelection or whose terms are expiring. The database allows voters to track potential judicial candidates and see predictions for how the candidates may rule on certain issues Scrutinize has researched, such as criminal justice reform, based on prior rulings. “If you don’t know what the people in power are deciding and how they’re deciding it, you can’t really hold them accountable or demand change in any ways,” said
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Oded Oren, the executive director of Scrutinize.
Other organizations, such as local chapters of the League of Women Voters
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, often include at least some judicial elections in their local voters’ guides, but these guides generally include only questionnaire responses from the candidates themselves. While this information can be extremely valuable — particularly in elections that are not well-covered by local media — it is a different kind of information than what Scrutinize seeks to provide. Because Scrutinize is basing its database on research that it has done, it provides information on specific issues, such as how often a judge publishes a written opinion explaining a decision in a case or whether a judge imposes pretrial detention on criminal defendants at a higher rate than other judges. If others follow this example, voters who care about specific issues could have another tool for figuring out how a particular judge might rule in those kinds of cases.
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