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Alex Kozinski on Ethics and Henry Paulson

In 2005, Alex Kozinski wrote a brilliant article in Legal Affairs on judicial ethics. He noted that current ethics laws are mostly trivial. A judge, e.g., must recuse himself when hearing a case involving a corporate client if the judge is a shareholder in the company. How many judges are actually going to corrupt their judgment over a few shares of stock? The real ethics issue come in cases involving bad facts. Will a judge bend the law when there is an especially sympathetic litigant before her? That?s unethical.  Will a judge rule a certain way to avoid nasty editorials that would appear national newspapers? Writing with the New York Times over your shoulder is corrupt, too, but is also not addressed by ethics laws. It?s covert biases that corrupt judicial decisionmaking...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime & Federalism on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).