Report Finds Appeals Court Judges Violated Ethics Laws

In the last three years, appeals court judges sat on cases in which they had a financial conflict of interest, and nearly half of them redacted some information in their financial filings, including gifts they’ve received and investments they hold, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity. The Center examined the recent financial disclosure statements filed by 255 of the country’s 258 appellate judges, and found 26 instances of more than a dozen judges sitting on cases from which they should have recused themselves because of conflicts,  and 20 more cases where judges had financial ties to the parties before them but there was not a  clear-cut violation of the rules. When informed of the conflicts, all 16 judges cited sent letters to the parties involved in the cases, disclosing the violations and opening those cases to potential further action.

Stock ownership accounted for 24 of the 26 instances of conflicts that the Center found in its study. Judges are more than twice as likely to own stock as the average American. All together, appellate judges have invested between $76 million and $226 million in more than 1,000 corporations, the Center found. “Federal judges are required to monitor their financial portfolios so that they know when to recuse themselves from particular cases,” the report reads. “But interviews with judges suggest that they aren’t always familiar with the stocks they own and the financial transactions they make.”

Though a computer system was put in place in 2006 for mandatory, automated screenings to detect conflicts of interest, the Center found that many judges were simply not aware of details of their financial investments. Breaking conflict-of-interest rules, while it may bruise a judge’s reputation, does not carry any serious consequences. In fact, the Center wrote, “Judges who fail to recuse themselves from cases in which they have a financial interest don’t face any formal punishment.”

In addition to overlooking stocks and investments, many judges – 111 of the 255 examined – blacked out details of their financial disclosures, including income they earned, gifts they received and investments they held. Withholding that information, though at times said to be necessary for safety reasons, also makes it difficult in many cases to verify whether or not judges improperly ruled in cases in which they had a conflict of interest. Of the nearly 4,400 judicial financial disclosure reports released to the public in 2011, 154 judges’ reports were partially redacted, per the judge’s request, for security reasons. Notably, only four requests due to security issues were denied.