The Committees will hear testimony at the ABA’s meeting next month in New Orleans.  To read the proposed amendments in full, click here.

To read the report, which is only twelve pages, click here.  Interestingly, the report begins and ends with the well-known tale of Judge Landis, without discussing the various conflicts and appearances in that tale; it almost makes one wonder whether the Chief Justice would like to take on a second job as ”Commissioner of Baseball.” 

Hopefully, this weapon will continue to be a rarity.  For the supreme court’s opinion, click here; and for the trial court’s order that offended the supreme court justices enough to impose a criminal conviction on the trial judge, click here. 

The opinion is worth a close read for many reasons, only two of which follow.  (It is interesting, for example, that the Committee twice criticizes the Sixth Circuit for failing to investigate fully the matter and thus basing its decision on incomplete information; the Committee then does nothing further and bases its decision on the same information.  But let’s leave that problem for another day and focus on the content of this important opinion.)  First, the opinion is worth reading for the footnotes.  As is often the case, textual footnotes are among the most thought-provoking (or sometimes mind-numbing) part of opinions.  On the point that the Sixth Circuit’s investigation was inadequate, for example, the Committee expressed regret that the Sixth Circuit ”appeared to resolve ambiguities in the record against the complainant.”  The Committee’s point is a good one, but is it clear that ambiguities (which invariably exist and persist) should be resolved in favor of complainants?  Perhaps the answer to that question should vary with the Canon at issue.  For Canon 2C, for instance, the respondent judge has voluntarily chosen to join or remain in the allegedly discriminatory organization, the judge will presumably have the best access to the organization’s membership rosters and policies, and the Canon is concerned in part with appearances.  In those circumstances, then, perhaps it might be permissible to shift the burden to the judge to prove that the organization does not discriminate — and perhaps that the organization also does not reasonably appear to discriminate. 

Canon 2C’s official commentary, on which the Committee later relied and built, does contain a form of burden-shifting when a judge joins or remains in a non-diverse organization, if “reasonable persons with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances would expect the membership would be diverse in the absence of invidious discrimination.”  “Relevant factors” in that regard ”include the size and nature of the organization and the diversity of persons in the locale who might reasonably be considered potential members.”  Here is the Committee’s application: “Nashville, Tennessee, is one of the major cosmopolitan cities of the Southern United States. In particular, it boasts a 27% African American population. Its female population is just over 50%. Although few organizations perfectly mirror the population trends of their surrounding locales, a member of the public would reasonably expect to see at least some women and African Americans among Belle Meade’s Resident Membership barring (1) invidious discrimination or (2) something unique about the Club — ‘such as that the organization is dedicated to the preservation of religious, ethnic or cultural values of legitimate common interest to its members,’ [Canon 2C Commentary] — that would suggest otherwise. There is, however, nothing about Belle Meade’s stated aims or activities that provides any such justification for the total absence of any female or African American Resident Members. . . .  Naturally, there is no shortage of women or — as Judge Paine proclaimed in his 1990 letter to the Club’s Board — African Americans fitting that description.”  Thus, absent someone (presumably Judge Paine) coming forward with proof to the contrary (which is obviously unlikely in this case because Judge Paine believed that the club’s policies were indeed problematic), the judge’s membership may be determined to be misconduct.

Later in the footnotes, the Committee also conceded a bombshell: “To our knowledge, Canon 2C has never before been enforced.”  To place that statement in its context, Canon 2C, in its current form, has been on the books for twenty years.  Now, such shocking statements permit one’s optimistic or pessimistic nature to come out: judicial ethics regulation has finally matured to the point of enforcing a critical rule (and hopefully others like it) designed to ensure an actually and apparently impartial judiciary; or judicial ethics regulation has failed for twenty years to enforce such a critical rule.  Indeed, on the pessimistic side of the ledger, it is noteworthy that — despite finding a violation of Canon 2C — the Committee failed to impose any discipline:  because Judge Paine has expressed an intention to retire soon, and “because this decision represents the first enforcement of Canon 2C, there is no cause at this point for us to take disciplinary action.”  (Indeed, the Committee went further, proclaiming that the judge will retire with his “reputation . . . intact.”)  I have noticed this phenomenon several times in discipline decisions involving both lawyers and judges, although most of the cases are older ones.  The idea seems sound in a common-law based sanction regime: we should apply the (new) rule only retroactively because, in part, respondents necessarily could not have had notice of the rule in advance to guide their conduct.  The idea seems significantly less sound in a code-based sanction regime (i.e., the one that we have had for a long time): Canon 2C has always been publicly available and has always prohibited this behavior by its terms.  Why, then, do we give the first respondent a free pass?  We can come up with a few reasons, but because the Committee offered none (save the impending retirement), we have no one with which to argue.   

Yet another footnote is interesting and particularly so for sex-segregated organizations.  Judge Paine’s club (Belle Meade) did have a “lady membership,” which was priced less (but included no voting rights).  The Committee noted that “insofar as Lady Membership is preferable to other forms of membership, the exclusion of men from that category arguably constitutes another form of gender discrimination under the Code.”

Second, the opinion is worth reading because it offered some guidance to judges considering joining an organization: “Any judge considering membership in an organization should take steps to ensure that such membership would not appear improper. Naturally, those steps will differ to some degree depending on the particular circumstances. But we expect them to include, in all cases, a survey of the group’s membership, constitution, and bylaws. If ‘reasonable persons with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances would expect that the membership would be diverse in the absence of invidious discrimination,’ but the membership nevertheless is not diverse, the judge should err on the side of caution and decline membership.”  The Committee also offered a fuller vision of the two-year remediation exception (i.e., that a judge has up to two years to fix a discriminatory organization to which s/he already belongs): ”The two-year qualification must be read in light of Canon 2C’s safeguarding of the appearance of propriety. Thus, we believe that this provision is available only if a judge determines that diversification efforts by the judge could reasonably succeed. In those circumstances, he or she may continue to hold membership in diligent pursuit of those efforts for a reasonable period of time not to exceed two years.”

The full opinion can be read here.

He instead recommends that we shift our emphasis in two steps: “The first part requires that attention shift away from the outcome-based recusal jurisprudence that focuses on the substantive recusal standard and the actual recusal decision. The second requires that attention shift toward the rules, regulations, and procedures that precede the recusal decision: namely, (1) ex ante regulation of judicial conduct and judicial selection that creates the appearance of bias in the first place, and (2) new recusal procedures to govern the processes by which judges make recusal decisions.  The recommended shift of attention to ex ante regulation of judicial conduct and appearance based recusal procedures will promote the appearance of judicial impartiality.”

As Prof. Bam himself notes, “[i]t may seem odd at first glance that in this Article about recusal, the key jurisprudential change that I recommend is not actually a change to recusal rules at all, but rather a new approach to regulating judges and aspiring judges.”  But his aim is well-intended and one we should keep in mind in reform: “I hope to show that to maximize the appearance of impartiality, the time to think about recusal is before the appearance of bias arises in the first place.”

Dmitry Bam, Making Appearances Matter: Recusal and the Appearance of Bias, 2011 BYU L. Rev. 943.

Role of the Judge: The primary mechanism by which drug courts reduce substance use and crime is through the judge. Drug court offenders believe that their judge treated them more fairly than the comparison group, including demonstrating greater respect and interest in them as individuals and greater opportunities to express their own voice during the proceedings. Furthermore, when offenders have more positive attitudes toward the judge, they have better outcomes. This was true across all offender subgroups when examining demographics, drug use history, criminality, and mental health. A separate analysis drawing upon the results of structured courtroom observations found, similarly, that drug courts whose judge was rated by members of the research team as exhibiting a more positive judicial demeanor (e.g., respectful, fair, attentive, enthusiastic, consistent/predictable, caring, and knowledgeable) produced better outcomes than other drug courts. Both analyses reaffirmed the central role of the judge.

Judges may well have performed these duties as a matter of principle, but it is doubly rewarding to see the principles leading to good results.  In light of the above conclusions, the study recommends these four points for drug court judges:

• Hold frequent judicial status hearings; in light of previous research on this topic, consider increasing the frequency of status hearings for “high risk” participants in particular.
• If the jurisdiction allows it, choose drug court judges carefully. Drug courts will be best served if administrators intentionally assign judges to the drug court who are committed to the model and interested in serving in this role.
• Monitor “client satisfaction” with the judge.
• Train judges on best practices regarding judicial demeanor and regarding how to communicate effectively with program participants.

The study can be found here.

Recent times have witnessed strong lobbying efforts to move states away from electing judges to appointing them. Opponents of judicial elections repeatedly argue that the general public does not want judges who are bought by contributors. Of course, voters do not want those judges, yet the electorate repeatedly rejects efforts to move away from an elected judiciary.

When voters do choose judges, the conventional wisdom assures us that the results will be less partisan if the judges run in nonpartisan elections – where candidates run but do not disclose their political affiliation. However, empirical evidence does not support this frequent claim. Studies repeatedly show that judges elected in partisan elections are substantially more likely to be independent than judges selected in nonpartisan elections.

People who bemoan judicial elections often attack two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that appear to politicize the judiciary. One is Republican Party v. White (2002), which recognized the free speech rights of judicial candidates. They similarly criticize Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) as a pro-business decision that recognizes first amendment rights of corporations or individuals to spend money to engage in their political speech favoring their candidates. Yet, White simply evens the playing field by overturning restrictions that were really a form of incumbent-protection legislation. So too, the controversy surrounding Citizens United is misplaced. It does not favor business at the expense of unions. Instead it gives all entities, including unions and individuals, free speech rights that the government cannot restrict, which is why the ACLU supported the position of the petitioner and opposed the Federal Election Commission’s regulation. Still others view Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, Inc. (2009) as a case that will force judges to disqualify themselves if a party is related to an independent group that had supported the judicial candidate. It is too soon to judge the effect of Caperton, but there are plenty of indications in the five-person majority that the case has little growth.

It i[s] inevitable that money will flow into political campaigns: indeed, economic studies wonder why the major players do not invest more in these campaigns, given that so much money rides on the outcome. As long as politicians and judges decide billion dollar issues, there will be multi-million dollar campaigns. Fortunately, the empirical evidence to support the assertion that those who pays the money gets the judge they wants is decidedly mixed.

Ronald D. Rotunda, Constitutionalizing Judicial Ethics: Judicial Elections After Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, Caperton, and Citizens United, 64 Ark. L. Rev. 1 (2011).

Tweet, poke, post, friend, like, blog, link, comment, and share: the opportunities to communicate electronically using social media tools seem never ending. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and LinkedIn are just a few of the social media sites that allow people to communicate and “connect” with others across the world in seconds. E-mail and sending text messages are two other ways to communicate electronically, but neither e-mails nor text messages can keep up with the speed, accessibility, and popularity of social media. Social media is entrenched in our lives as evidenced by the fact that adult profiles on online social media sites are up from only 8% in 2005 to 47% in 2010. The legal profession has also jumped aboard the social media bandwagon with 40% of judges reporting they are on social media sites and 56% of attorneys reported having a presence on social media sites. Whichever “social networking” or communication method is chosen by an individual, the technology has made that communication instantaneous. Unfortunately, social media communication is also dangerous to the integrity of the courts.

Emily M. Janoski-Haehlen, The Courts Are All a‘Twitter’: The Implications of Social Media Use in the Courts, 46 Val. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2011).

The resulting opinions are relevant and indeed crucial for at least two reasons: (1) the seven-member opinion of the Court strongly validates the historical pedigree and constitutional legitimacy of American recusal laws, both legislative and judicial; and (2) both Justice Scalia (for seven justices) and Justice Kennedy (for his own pivotal self) noted that recusal rules may, quite understandably, be crafted more rigidly for the judiciary than for the legislature.

In particular, Justice Scalia acknowledged that ”[t]here are of course differences between a legislator’s vote and a judge’s, and thus between legislative and judicial recusal rules; nevertheless, there do not appear to have been any serious challenges to judicial recusal statutes as having unconstitutionally restricted judges’ First Amendment rights.”  Op. at 6 & n.3 (distinguishing White).  Justice Kennedy noted in his concurrence that “[t]he Court has held that due process may require recusal in the context of certain judicial determinations, see Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U. S. ___ (2009); but as [my concurrence] indicates, it is not at all clear that a statute of this breadth can be enacted to extend principles of judicial impartiality to a quite different context [i.e., the legislative and perhaps regulatory context].  The differences between the role of political bodies in formulating and enforcing public policy, on the one hand, and the role of courts in adjudicating individual disputes according to law, on the other, . . . may call for a different understanding of the responsibilities attendant upon holders of those respective offices and of the legitimate restrictions that may be imposed upon them.”

Here is the full opinion: Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan; see also coverage at the Election Law Blog.

Some press coverage follows: New York Times; Wall Street Journal; and The Tennessean.