CRC’s new investigation shows that between 2002 and 2004, 160 judges took a total of 331 junkets, an average of more than 110 trips per year. This is more than a 60% increase from the average of less than 70 trips in the mid-1990’s, when CRC first started tracking these junkets.
CRC has now documented that 349 federal judges have taken a total of 1158 junkets between 1992 and 2004. These trips take place at resorts and provide the judge, and frequently the judge's spouse, plenty of time for golfing and other recreational activities. The value of the gift to judges associated with these trips sometimes exceeds $10,000.
This practice is tarnishing the reputation of the entire federal judiciary even though only a relatively small percentage of judges take junkets. Some judges never let a private interest pay for their travel. Most limit their reimbursed travel to speaking engagements and other activities that improve the legal system or the administration of justice.
However -- as the lists of most junketed judges and most junketed courts show -- some judges take these trips time after time, year after year, even though the trips have been harshly condemned by the nation’s leading experts in legal ethics, by former judges, by members of Congress, and by dozens of newspaper editorial pages from across the country and the ideological spectrum.
CRC has entered the data for this investigation in our on-line searchable database at www.tripsforjudges.org.
Backdrop to the Investigation:
CRC first exposed corporate junketing of federal judges in 1998, revealing that a corporate-funded outfit called Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) was wining, dining and vacationing judges, while instructing them how and why to roll back environmental laws. This discovery led to a front-page expose in The Washington Post and to a furious reaction by members of Congress, ethics experts and editorial pages. Subsequently, CRC has found in 2000 and 2004 that the corporate sponsorship of the junkets is creating conflicts and appearance problems that threaten the integrity of the federal bench. CRC successfully filed ethics complaints in 2004 to force three federal judges to resign from FREE’s board of directors.
The judiciary’s response to this problem has been to make the problem worse in three specific ways:
- In 2004, after promising to fix the problem, the Judiciary instead rewrote the key ethical guidance to federal judges on taking junkets in a way that, according to a Washington Post editorial, gave “A Green Light to Junkets.”
- Since the mid-1990’s, the Judiciary’s Financial Disclosure Office has been instructing judges to disclose junkets as a “reimbursement” not a gift, and to not estimate a value for these trips, as required by federal law. The result is to hide the value of these trips, which FREE’s tax forms indicate can cost more than $10,000 per judge, per trip. In reviewing thousands of forms, only one judge – a former chair of the Judiciary’s Committee on Codes of Conduct – correctly reported the value of gifts and reimbursements associated with these trips.
- In 1998, the Judiciary lobbied for and won a change in federal law that allows broad redaction of financial disclosure forms. The result is to hide junkets from public view.
Results of CRC’s Latest Investigation
Each year, every federal judge is required to file a financial disclosure report. Among other things, a judge must report as a gift or a reimbursement any travel expenses exceeding $250 that were paid for by a private organization; this includes the tuition, free travel, food and lodging associated with educational seminars. The U.S. Courts’ Administrative Office holds these records for the public for six years.
CRC’s latest investigation involved the review of more than 3,000 financial disclosure forms filed between 2002 and 2004 by every active and senior federal judge (magistrate judges and bankruptcy judges were not included in our study). We copied the gift and reimbursement section for every form that disclosed a multiple day trip financed by a private party or individual. We then entered information on more than 2,300 judicial trips into our on-line database at www.tripsforjudges.org. This database now contains information about almost 10,000 trips taken from 1992 to 2004.
As explained in more detail here, we find only a small percentage of the trips in the database to be problematic. CRC believes it is admirable for judges to take time out of their busy schedules to give speeches, judge moot courts, impart wisdom and help improve the law and inclusion of trips fitting any of these descriptions in our database should not be taken as criticism of such trips. In creating our database, we have erred on the side of over inclusiveness.
Our focus, as in past investigations, was on the largest purveyors of trips designed to “educate” federal judges on particular hot button legal topics. We have dubbed the three organizations hosting the most trips – FREE, George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center, and the Liberty Fund – the “Big Three.” These three organizations are not only the largest providers of private judicial education, they share a similar, libertarian/pro-big corporation ideology, click here for more.
The number of Big Three trips has grown steadily over the past 12 years , from an average of 68 trips in 1993-1995 to an average of 110 trips in 2002-2004, a 62% increase.
While the junkets problem is large and growing, it does not infect the entire judiciary. The large majority of judges never take junkets and many judges take one trip, presumably find them problematic, and then never return. Some judges, on the other hand, go again and again, year after year. For example, Judge Loren Smith from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims took 10 Big Three trips between 2002 and 2004, for a total of 51 days at resorts paid for by corporations and other special interests. Click here for lists of the top junketing judges for the last 13, 6 and 3 years.
Given the libertarian/pro-corporate focus of the Big Three, it is perhaps not surprising that a significant majority of the junketing judges are Republican appointees. CRC found that 68% of judges going on Big Three funded trips between 2002 and 2004 were Republican appointees compared with 32% Democrat appointees. The Liberty Fund trips had an astounding 97% Republican appointee rate. For a breakdown of the junketing judges by presidential appointee, click here.
While judges all over the country take junkets, there are also junketing hot and cold spots. For example, not a single judge on two circuits – the First Circuit and the Fourth Circuit – took a Big Three trip between 2002 and 2004. In contrast, half of the judges (8 of 16) on the Fifth Circuit took a total of 26 Big Three trips during the same period. Click here for list of the top junketing courts for the last 13, 6 and 3 years.
State of Play on Ethic Reforms
In March 2003, Senator Leahy was poised to move legislation banning junkets as part of a judicial pay raise bill. Representatives of the Judicial Conference convinced Leahy to pull this measure to give the judiciary one final chance to “self-regulate.” Instead of fixing the problem, the judiciary’s Code of Conduct Committee made things worse, rewriting its ethics rules (contained in Advisory Opinion 67) to encourage junketing with even looser reporting standards. The Washington Post editorial page dubbed the move, “A Green Light for Junkets.”
As a result, Senator Leahy has again introduced on this topic (S. 2202). His bill would ban junkets while creating a fund to pay for needed continuing legal education for judges. Promisingly, Senator Leahy may have an ally in Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts responded to a confirmation hearing inquiry about these trips stating that he would study the issue and that it was “clear that special interests should not be permitted to lobby federal judges.” If Roberts looks carefully at these trips, he will conclude that this is precisely what is going on here.
Conclusion
Corporate lobbying of federal judges through expense-paid junkets has flourished in recent years even as outrage over this lobbying has grown. The reason is that these trips -- and information about them – is largely hidden from the public’s view. Getting comprehensive information about what trips are being provided to what judges requires a massive study of judicial disclosure forms and, even then, redactions and limitations on the information provided cloud the picture. The public has a right to know what special interests are wining and dining their federal judges. More fundamentally, the public has a right to a federal judiciary that is protected from the influence peddling that undermines public confidence in the other branches of our government (a recent Gallup poll has Congressional approval nearing an all-time low of 23%). The time for a ban on judicial junkets is now.
* For more information on CRC's effort to prevent corporate judicial lobbying at judicial junkets, click here.
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