April, 1998:

Community Rights Counsel released a report entitled The Takings Project: Using Federal Courts to Attack Community and Environmental Protections, which documented the comprehensive efforts by corporate special interests to establish the Constitution's Takings Clause as a barrier to health, safety, and environmental protections. Among these activities, the most remarkable were the property rights junkets for judges sponsored by the Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) that, in their words, emphasize "the role of property rights, incentives and voluntary cooperation in achieving environmental goals." FREE uses corporate-funding to host junkets at several exclusive Rocky Mountain resorts where "time is provided for cycling, fishing, golfing, hiking and horseback riding."

The story of these junkets from the Takings Project was reported on the front-page of The Washington Post and generated dozens of other news stories and editorials.

July 2000:

Following up on the Takings Project in July 2000, CRC released a 106-page study entitled Nothing for FREE: How Private Judicial Seminars Are Undermining Environmental Protections and Breaking the Public's Trust. Nothing for Free was the first-ever comprehensive study of the groups conducting junkets, their funding sources, and the subject matters upon which they educate judges. It documented that pro-business, anti-regulatory seminars dominate the marketplace of private judicial education and proved that over 10 percent of the federal judiciary takes at least one special-interest junket each year. Most importantly, Nothing for Free documented a link between attendance at anti-regulatory junkets and the issuance of anti-regulatory rulings in the area of environmental law. Finally, Nothing for Free identified dozens of instances in which federal judges have violated federal disclosure laws by failing to report junkets on their public disclosure forms. Simultaneously with the release of Nothing for Free, CRC established a new website (www.tripsforjudges.org) that includes an online copy of the report and a searchable database of every privately-funded trip taken by a federal judge from 1992 to 1998. Nothing for Free was enormously influential. It was hailed by 30 editorial boards including The New York Times, which called it a "valuable new report." It generated a mountain of favorable earned media coverage encompassing newspapers, radio, and television.

July 27, 2000:

In response to Nothing for FREE, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced legislation to ban the junkets. The American Bar Association, which prepares and updates the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, prepared an ethics opinion that would outlaw judicial junkets in the numerous states that adopt the Model Code and that would provide critical guidance to the federal judiciary on necessary reforms.

April 2001:

ABC New's 20/20 released an alarming expose in which a hidden camera showed federal judges being wined and dined at a corporate funded seminar. Read CRC's news release on the 20/20 report.

May 15, 2001

Chief Justice William Rehnquist gave a speech defending corporate-funded judicial seminars and attacked legislation sponsored by Senators Kerry Feingold. CRC's Doug Kendall was quoted in a Washington Post article, stating, "The subject is the problem with corporate-funded seminars for judges.  Instead of addressing it, he's [Rehnquist] essentially attacking the only people who are trying to do something about it."

February 2002:

CRC chronicled the fact that D. Brooks Smith, then a nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, had presided over two cases where his financial interests were very much at stake. This stock conflict was deemed "one of the most serious I've seen" by a preeminent ethics expert, and it led The Washington Post to editorialize against Smith's confirmation based entirely on the ethics issues CRC raised and publicized.

April 3, 2003:

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Kerry (D-MA) introduced a bill titled "The Fair and Independent Judiciary Act of 2003 (S. 787)," that would link a ban on judicial junkets to a judicial pay raise. To read more about this bill, click here.

October, 2003

At a time of unprecedented public concern over judicial ethics, the ABA proposed dramatic changes to its Model Code of Judicial Conduct that would make the Model Code significantly weaker and less easily enforced. To read an analysis of these changes by CRC, click here(PDF). Taking action on this, in late 2003, CRC and HALT, Inc., an organization of Americans for Legal Reform, urged an American Bar Association commission to revise the Model Code of Judicial Conduct to include strict requirements for financial disclosure, recusal lists, certification, and privately-funded junkets for judges. To read the news release regarding the submission to the ABA, click here. To read the comments that CRC and HALT submitted, click here (PDF format). (The New York Times and United States Law Week both published articles against the ABA's proposed drastic changes.

March 22, 2004

CRC produced a follow-up report to Nothing for Free, titled Tainted Justice: How Private Judicial Seminars Undermine Public Trust in the Federal Judiciary. The report documents how corporations are using junkets to buy access to federal judges who presided over important environmental cases involving the companies' interests. The release of Tainted Justice produced editorial outrage (PDF) from across the ideological spectrum and generated press around the issue from a variety of sources. CRC also took the unprecedented step of filing ethics complaints against the three federal appellate judges who were sitting on FREE's board.

May 5, 2005

Maryland-based US District Judge Andre Davis, one of four federal judges serving on the board of a group that runs corporate-sponsored junkets for federal judges, resigned from the board in response to CRC's ethics petition. It was the first time a petition led to a judge quitting the widely criticized junketing program's board. Read CRC's news release here.

January 27, 2006

Senators Patrick Leahy, John Kerry, and Russ Feingold introduced a bill to stop the disturbing practice of judicial junkets. The Fair and Independent Judiciary Act of 2006 would allow for judicial education but ban the corporate-bankrolled vacations that have sometimes accompanied it. Read CRC's news release here.

May 2006

"How does it look? It doesn't look good."

- The Washington Post (response of Pete Geddes, Executive Vice President of FREE to the revelation that Exxon Mobil was funding his organization's judicial trips.)

CRC broke the news that newly obtained documents from Exxon Mobil and Phillip Morris showed that the groups donated substantial funds to two top junket hosts, FREE and the Law and Economics Center (LEC). These funds went directly into programs that "educated" federal judges on issues of importance to the corporations. Essentially, Exxon Mobil and Phillip Morris were paying FREE and LEC to lobby federal judges on their issues. Read more.

September 19, 2006

The Judicial Conference issued a set of rules governing federal judges' participation in junkets. The new rules require judges to disclose more information about the trips and their sponsors, and to make that information available to the public. Read CRC's news release here.

March 2007

Months after the Judicial Conference issued rules governing judicial junkets, CRC released a review showing that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts was doing little to inforce theses rules. CRC also uncovered a number of loopholes in the rules, which appeared to be written in to allow judges to disclose fewer trips and to make trips that were documented difficult for members of the public to find. Read the news release and the review.

January 30, 2008

Community Rights Counsel sent a letter to the Judiciary’s Committee on Codes of Conduct demanding the release of an ethics opinion concerning junketing organizations that had been kept secret by the Judiciary, even as two prominent federal judges continued to serve on the Board of Directors of FREE. To read CRC's news release, media coverage and the response to our letter, click here.

March 6, 2008

Eight national environmental, labor, and civil rights organizations -- Sierra Club, NRDC, People for the American Way, Earthjustice, AFL-CIO, ADA Watch/National Coalition for Disability Rights and Community Rights Counsel -- representing millions of members across the country, sent this letter to Senators Reid and McConnell strongly urging support for a ban on junkets for judges (Section 10(a)(2) of S. 1638), as part of legislation that would give federal judges a significant pay raise.