Judges In Street Clothes

To maintain public confidence in the judiciary, judges are governed by the strictest of ethical codes. Codes of conduct not only circumscribe a judge’s official conduct but also restrict every aspect of a judge’s off-bench life. Judges in Street Clothes: Acting Ethically Off-the-Bench provides an in-depth analysis of the rules limiting the charitable, educational, religious, fraternal, civic, and law-related extrajudicial activities of state and federal judges. This comprehensive, heavily footnoted resource examines: (1) the historical development of the American Bar Association’s four model judicial codes with an emphasis on the rules regulating the charitable, educational, religious, fraternal, civic, and law-related activities of judges; (2) the State’s interests in restricting the extrajudicial activities of judges; (3) the strengths and weaknesses of rules governing a judge’s off-bench activities; (4) how state and federal courts, judicial disciplinary commissions, and judicial ethics advisory committees have interpreted judicial conduct rules; (5) best practices for judges; and (6) the constitutionality of the restrictions on a judge’s charitable, educational, religious, fraternal, civic, and law-related undertakings. From both a theoretical and practical standpoint, this book addresses the ethical implications of the everyday activities of judges. How far may a judge go in expressing personal opinions about social and legal issues? What are the limits on a judge’s use of social media? Is it permissible for a judge to receive an award from a victim advocacy group? Do the rules permit a judge to speak at a church or bar association’s fund-raising dinner? May judges teach prosecutors and law enforcement officials how to improve their job performance? May a judge appear in an informational video for the judge’s alma mater? Former judge Raymond J. McKoski discusses these and a host of other everyday situations judges face in their attempts to remain involved community members while promoting public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.

Public law

Trends in State Courts is an annual, peer-reviewed publication that highlights innovative practices in critical areas that are of interest to courts, and often serves as a guide for developing new initiatives and programs and supporting policy decisions. This year's Trends looks at leading during a pandemic, virtual remote interpreting, online dispute resolution, case management systems, new data systems for drug treatment courts, legal icons as a plain language tool, family justice initiative, the impact of labeling youth sexual offenders, parental alienation, divorces among senior citizens, state court collaboration across systems, what happens when a judge's personal opinion collides with the law, building trust, and racial justice.

For many Americans, Vermont still seems what the United States at least in myth once was--a bucolic landscape of wooded hills, neat farms, and handsome villages--before modern forces transformed our agrarian nation into an urban-industrial giant. Vermonters have long been respected as sturdy Americans who prize hard work, honest dealing, town-meeting government, and dry humor. Their way of life, along with the beauty of their Green Mountains and quiet valleys, remains immensely attractive to natives and newcomers who seek beauty and the satisfaction of self-sufficiency in a natural environment where rocky soil and a varied climate have always compelled respect.

Democracy in the Courts examines lay participation in the administration of justice and how it reflects certain democratic principles. An international comparative perspective is taken for exploring how lay people are involved in the trial of criminal cases in European countries and how this impacts on their perspectives of the national legal systems. Comparisons between countries are made regarding how and to what extent lay participation takes place and the relation between lay participation and the legal system's legitimacy is analyzed. Presenting the results of interviews with both professional judges and lay participants in a number of European countries regarding their views on the involvement of lay people in the legal system, this book explores the ways in which judges and lay people interact while trying cases, examining the characteristics of both professional and lay judging of cases. Providing an important analysis of practice, this book will be of interest to academics, legal scholars and practitioners alike.

A courtroom drama set in 1966 in Sydney, the novel traces the path of a murder investigation which results in a prominent politician being charged with the murder of his young lover. An inexperienced lawyer is surprisingly engaged to brief a down and out barrister by the accused's wife, and as the facts unfold, the myriad motives of the characters become enmeshed in a legal power struggle. Death, betrayal, passion and perjury combine in a complex web, where legal tactics and ethical obligations collide. BOOK REVIEW: "Cullen writes well and the action and dialogue move along at a steady and lively pace. Unlike some first-time novelists, Cullen manages to keep himself out of the narrative and allows his characters to carry the load. The author excels at creating the ethical and tactical dilemmas faced by defence attorneys. Overall, there is no doubt a jury would deliver a unanimous favourable verdict on The Improbable Advocate." -Foreword Clarion Review.

"This biography of Rose Elizabeth Bird is an overdue look at California's first female supreme court chief justice, against the backdrop of California's political and cultural climate in the 1970s and 1980s"--

In No Place for Ethics, Hill argues that contemporary judicial review by the U.S. Supreme Court rests on its mistaken positivist understanding of law—law simply because so ordered—as something separate from ethics. Further, to assert any relation between the two is to contaminate both, either by turning law into an arm of ethics, or by making ethics an expression of law. This legal positivism was on full display recently when the Supreme Court declared that the CDC was acting unlawfully by extending the eviction moratorium to contain the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant, something that, the Court admitted, was of indisputable benefit to the public. How mistaken however to think that acting for the good of the public is to act unlawfully when actually it is to act ethically and must therefore be lawful. To address this mistake, Hill contends that an understanding of natural law theory provides the basis for a constitutive relation between ethics and law without confusing their distinct role in answering the basic question, how should I behave in society? To secure that relation, the Court has an overriding responsibility when carrying out its review to do so with reference to normative ethics from which the U.S. Constitution is derived and to which it is accountable. While the Constitution confirms, for example, the liberty interests of individuals, it does not originate those interests which have their origin in human rights that long preceded it. Essential to this argument is an appreciation of ethics as objective and based on principles, like those of justice, truth, and reason that ought to inform human behavior at its very springs. Applied in an analysis of five major Supreme Court cases, this appreciation of ethics reveals how wrongly decided these cases are.