#judicial-ethics

#judicial-ethics

* ICE refusing to grant detainees access to legal counsel. "Imagine the chaos," one agent said, describing the bare minimum of a constitutional society. [ ABC News] * DOJ Civil Rights chief threatens to charge Don Lemon under the KKK Act. [ NBC News] * After state defections, ABA's law school accreditation council reminds everyone that it's independent of the ABA. [ ABA Journal]

You need to calm down in court and stop emailing him multi-page letters asking him to intervene in your cases. I think it's the tenor of our times, Sunshine, the statewide coordinating matrimonial judge, told a room of more than 100 attorneys at the Bar Association's Family Law Luncheon. I need to urge everyone to take it down a tone.

Some people really struggle with distinguishing between individual and systemic responsibility when both are at play. For example, as important as it is to make sure that individual drivers obey speed limits and pay attention to the road and that pedestrians look both ways before they cross the street, intersections are a structural factor that can amplify harms depending on how they're planned and built.

A Brooklyn power-broker threw another wrench into a multimillion-dollar court case now on its fifth judge - by personally phoning the latest jurist, the judge revealed Tuesday. Former borough Democratic Party Chair Frank Seddio - who has been ripped in a federal lawsuit tied to a state case involving more than $2 million in missing investor money - recently called the judge handling the state case, Francios Rivera, on his personal cell phone, the jurist said in court. An exasperated Rivera said Seddio called him to tell him a lawyer who used to work for the judge as a legal secretary was being made an acting supreme court judge.

While campaigning for his seat in 2023, Plass, who served as a Hyde Park police officer and worked at his family's limousine business for decades, sent out a campaign mailer where he pledged to keep drug dealers off our streets and out of our hotels, incarcerate offenders and protect victims of domestic violence, and assure repeat offenders are sentenced to the full extent of the law.

A Texas judge is asking a federal court to overturn marriage equality in the U.S., arguing in a lawsuit filed on Friday that marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional because it was legalized in a decision that "subordinat[ed] state law to the policy preferences of unelected judges." The case involves Judge Dianne Hensley of Waco, Texas, who has been involved in years of legal proceedings to try to win the right to not perform marriages for same-sex couples while still performing them for opposite-sex couples.

Manhattan's Appellate Division courthouse, located at 27 Madison Ave., is an example of Beaux-Arts architecture, a time capsule of Progressive Era aesthetic values and recently a canvas for its contemporary leadership to imprint modern attitudes. Photo by Dean Moses [Editors note: Welcome to the inaugural edition of the the amNew York Law Bench Report, where we will feature notable rulings from state and federal judges, brief news bulletins that impact the judiciary and announcements from judges' chambers. Are we missing anything? Contact editor-in-chief Andrew Denney at adenney@schnepsmedia.com]

The law has always been a deeply human affair: attorneys arguing, judges deliberating, juries weighing credibility, precedent, and plain old common sense. But now, something new has entered the courtroom - and it doesn't bill by the hour or even need a coffee break. Artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived, and it's quietly moving closer to the bench. AI is no longer just lurking in the background.

What happened: After years of lawsuits, the state supreme court adjusted its code of conduct for local judges that previously banned them from performing opposite-sex marriages but refused to perform same-sex marriages because it creates the appearance of bias. Bias is OK now if a judge cites a "sincerely held religious belief." Why it matters: In rural parts of the state, there could be as few as one judge in the county who performs marriages at all, adding to the burden LGBTQ+ people have to carry in order to access their rights.

A former New York judge who joined Anderson Kill last month told Law360 that he made the move because of family considerations and a looming mandatory retirement when he turns 70 years old in a few years. But former Judge Louis L. Nock did not mention that he joined the law firm on the same day that New York ethics regulators agreed to drop ethics charges against him in return for his agreement to resign from the bench and never accept judicial office again,

Justice Barrett Shares Concerns About Lawyers Using AI To Prep For Oral Argument: Can't blame the software for predicting obvious questions.

Judge Posner emphasized that the reliance on textualism and originalism in legal interpretation serves more as a facade than a genuine practice, revealing a deeper critique of legal philosophies.