The California Supreme Court is weighing a new ethics rule that would permit the state’s judges to speak publicly on any court ruling if it becomes an issue in an election or recall campaign. The San Diego Union-Tribune explains:
The move to amend the Judicial Code of Ethics would allow any judge, not just the jurist involved in a campaign, to comment on “the procedural, factual or legal basis of a decision about which the judge has been criticized during the election or recall campaign,” according to a draft of the proposed rule.
Historically, judges don’t comment on pending cases out of concern it could show a bias to one side or the other, impair the rights to a fair trial or influence how a case develops. The current ethics rules ban judges, and their staff, from making any comment on pending cases.
The decision is spurred by last year’s ugly and successful campaign to recall state judge Aaron Persky, whose extraordinarily light sentence of admitted rapist Brock Turner galvanized a movement to remove him from the bench. Existing ethics rules prevented Persky–or any other judge–from speaking about his decision. If a new rule is implemented, it would go into effect on April 1.
The Interdependent Third Branch 