[TrumpCard]

Anyone see the WSJ story today about how 2/3 of federal judges didn't recuse themselves in cases the defendant was a company in which they owned stock? What in the holy hell has happened to our moral compass in this society?

Lying and cheating is being so accepted, even enabled, that people are seeing that is the best way to get ahead in life. It's absolutely vomit-inducing how many truly shitty, dishonest people there are amongst us.

The moral rot must be purged and replaced with integrity and honesty or the whole society is going to implode.

While I basically agree with you analysis of our current society, I am not of the opinion that this is necessarily an example of it. The presumption has to be that if the judge does not recuse himself it is because he believes he can make an unbiased judgement even though he may own some stock in companies appearing before him. Assuming that is not true is not of itself warranted. A better question would be did the judge inform the parties of that situation to allow them to challenge his decision to continue as the judge. If that was done and nobody did challenge, its fine IMHO.

Several of the judges contacted by WSJ said they goofed or had a lapse or some other nonsense. They knew what they were doing and did it anyway. Making matters even worse, Chief Justice Roberts, who oversees the courts, was asked for a comment and he declined.  He couldn't even say "judges must recuse themselves when they have a conflict," as a generic statement, unrelated to any specific case.

Here is the article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/131-federal...1632834421

Money Quote:  "About two-thirds of federal district judges disclosed holdings of individual stocks, and nearly one of every five who did heard at least one case involving those stocks."

My take as litigator for 20 years.  I often have heard judges disclose when they hold stock in a company that is a party.  I can't be sure the number of instances when they haven't disclosed (obviously).  Personally, I would not object on that basis unless the holding were quite large and the case were material to the company's stock price.  In most instances, neither is true.  I'm all for following rules to a "t," but the vast majority of the instances where this occurred do not reflect moral rot.  I cannot exclude the possibility that there was an instance or two where the judge purposefully failed to disclose such a bias.  And since we don't have a good way to determine intent nor do we have a good way to go back and give parties the opportunity to demand recusal without knowing how the judge would rule on key issues in the case.  So the consequences here are very unfortunate.  But it is wrong to say that all of the judges caught up in this investigation are corrupt.  Considering the WSJ article acknowledges that virtually every judge who owns individual stocks ran afoul of the ethical standard, we have a good idea that it's extremely difficult for judges to comply with the rule as written.  I might suggest that the relevant authority (Congress, a judicial council, SCOTUS, or whoever) consider adopting ethical standards that make compliance easier.  Maybe the rule should be more strict:  No judge may hold individual stocks, maybe except in a blind investment account.  Maybe the rule should be more lax:  Judges do not need to report holdings less than $XYZ.  But federal judges do a really difficult job for far, far less compensation than they could earn in the private sector and it's not right to accuse a broad swath of them of corruption when they have only committed a technical violation of a law without actually ruling in a biased fashion in any case.

[TrumpCard]

Anyone see the WSJ story today about how 2/3 of federal judges didn't recuse themselves in cases the defendant was a company in which they owned stock? What in the holy hell has happened to our moral compass in this society?

Lying and cheating is being so accepted, even enabled, that people are seeing that is the best way to get ahead in life. It's absolutely vomit-inducing how many truly shitty, dishonest people there are amongst us.

The moral rot must be purged and replaced with integrity and honesty or the whole society is going to implode.

While I basically agree with you analysis of our current society, I am not of the opinion that this is necessarily an example of it. The presumption has to be that if the judge does not recuse himself it is because he believes he can make an unbiased judgement even though he may own some stock in companies appearing before him. Assuming that is not true is not of itself warranted. A better question would be did the judge inform the parties of that situation to allow them to challenge his decision to continue as the judge. If that was done and nobody did challenge, its fine IMHO.

Several of the judges contacted by WSJ said they goofed or had a lapse or some other nonsense. They knew what they were doing and did it anyway. Making matters even worse, Chief Justice Roberts, who oversees the courts, was asked for a comment and he declined.  He couldn't even say "judges must recuse themselves when they have a conflict," as a generic statement, unrelated to any specific case.

Here is the article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/131-federal...1632834421

Money Quote:  "About two-thirds of federal district judges disclosed holdings of individual stocks, and nearly one of every five who did heard at least one case involving those stocks."

My take as litigator for 20 years.  I often have heard judges disclose when they hold stock in a company that is a party.  I can't be sure the number of instances when they haven't disclosed (obviously).  Personally, I would not object on that basis unless the holding were quite large and the case were material to the company's stock price.  In most instances, neither is true.  I'm all for following rules to a "t," but the vast majority of the instances where this occurred do not reflect moral rot.  I cannot exclude the possibility that there was an instance or two where the judge purposefully failed to disclose such a bias.  And since we don't have a good way to determine intent nor do we have a good way to go back and give parties the opportunity to demand recusal without knowing how the judge would rule on key issues in the case.  So the consequences here are very unfortunate.  But it is wrong to say that all of the judges caught up in this investigation are corrupt.  Considering the WSJ article acknowledges that virtually every judge who owns individual stocks ran afoul of the ethical standard, we have a good idea that it's extremely difficult for judges to comply with the rule as written.  I might suggest that the relevant authority (Congress, a judicial council, SCOTUS, or whoever) consider adopting ethical standards that make compliance easier.  Maybe the rule should be more strict:  No judge may hold individual stocks, maybe except in a blind investment account.  Maybe the rule should be more lax:  Judges do not need to report holdings less than $XYZ.  But federal judges do a really difficult job for far, far less compensation than they could earn in the private sector and it's not right to accuse a broad swath of them of corruption when they have only committed a technical violation of a law without actually ruling in a biased fashion in any case.