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Legal Times
Thursday, August 8, 2005
Timothy J. Dowling
To the editor:
In my July 18 op-ed on private judicial seminars ("Stop Judges Tripping on Corporate Dollar," Page 60), I posed a simple ethical question: Why should federal judges be allowed to accept the large travel gifts associated with these seminars when federal prosecutors can't?
I argued that judges should be prohibited from personally accepting such gifts. And I described proposed legislation that provides for taxpayer funding of judicial education and requires an ethics review for private judicial seminars comparable to that used by executive branch attorneys
In their Aug. 1 response ("Are They Swaying Judges?" Page 54), J.B. Ruhl and Peter Appel ignore these issues, candidly asserting it is "beyond [their] expertise to opine on what is or is not within the bounds of judicial ethics." They also disregard the glaring conflicts caused by particular seminars that have left litigants feeling outraged and disadvantaged.
Instead, they argue that the seminars offered by the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment do not advance a political agenda. But FREE itself asserts that its seminars promote a "unifying theme" that rejects "top-down, command and control environmentalism regulation. And a FREE trustee has acknowledged the relationship between FREE's seminars and litigation campaigns to challenge federal regulations.
Ruhl and Appel suggest that corporate representatives do not attend the seminars. Wrong again. For example, FREE invited Texaco's former CEO to lecture judges on "The Environment: A CEO's Perspective." This seminar was especially problematic because the audience included the trial judge in a billion-dollar lawsuit against Texaco for environmental despoliation, a case in which the lecturer was a potential witness.
Ruhl and Appel contend that FREE's seminars are "balanced." Perhaps sometimes, but certainly not always, by FREE's own admission. If criticism by ethics scholars and editorial boards has caused it to provide more balance, so much the better.
But the primary ethical problem with these seminars is not what is taught but FREE's gifts to judges. The legislation we support applies to all privately funded judicial seminars, regardless of political perspective. If a federal judge wants to attend a private seminar, the judiciary should pay the expenses and independently confirm that the seminar is in the public interest.
TIMOTHY J. DOWLING
Chief Counsel
Community Rights Counsel
Washington
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