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Should federal judges be able to take all-expenses-paid trips
financed by corporations to improve their judicial education
-- and avoid telling the public about it?
Of course not. But critics of a new set of judicial rules
believe that may be one result of guidelines that were rewritten
this summer and posted on the federal judiciary's Web site
in August. The new rules have caught the attention of court
watchers who fear they will lead to more conflicts of interest
complications for federal judges, not fewer.
Under the old rules, written six years ago, judges were not
supposed to attend judicial education seminars where sponsors
such as corporations were likely to be involved in court cases,
and seminar topics were related to those cases. Watchdog groups
feared special interests were taking advantage of the judicial
seminars to advance their views on topics related to their
litigation.
Last year, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., proposed legislation
that would prohibit judges from accepting such trips. When
judges promised to revise their rules with better guidelines
on such trips, Sen. Leahy withdrew his legislation. But last
week he said he planned to reintroduce the bill because the
new rules amounted to weaker guidelines than those they replaced.
Sen. Leahy has a point. Instead of imposing clearer restrictions,
the new rules -- drafted by a committee headed at the time
by U.S. District Judge William L. Osteen of Greensboro --
appear to make it easier for judges to take junkets for judicial
seminars. The new rules say a judge should not accept a trip
in which a sponsor provided "substantial" financial
support, where a sponsor has a case in a judge's courtroom
and where a seminar topic is related to a court case. What's
more, judges are supposed to be "mindful of their financial
disclosure obligations," but they no longer have to disclose
publicly the value of the trips they take.
Judge Osteen's committee may indeed have tried to clarify
the rules on what kinds of trips judges may take, but it is
difficult to see how these are an improvement over the old
rules, watchdog groups contend. Douglas T. Kendall, the executive
director of Community Rights Counsel, said the change "effectively
clears the path for federal judges to take lavish, corporate-funded
trips."
We believe the committee missed an opportunity to declare
that free junkets offered to federal judges for judicial education
purposes are poorly disguised attempts to influence what judges
know and what they think about issues already in their courtrooms,
or likely to land there. Judges already have ample opportunity
to learn about these issues through a dizzying array of sources
-- including their own judicial research.
Accepting trips paid for by special interest sponsors only
creates the impression -- and perhaps confirms the reality
-- that judges are beholden to those interests rather than
to the ideal of an independent, impartial judiciary. Congress
should step in and ban these trips outright -- and judges
who don't understand why ought to take a hike.
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