Iowa judge allowed attorneys to ghost write “a couple hundred” orders and opinions

A recently retired Iowa trial judge has admitted that “a couple hundred” of his orders and opinions were ghost-written by the prevailing attorneys. Many of Judge Edward Jacobson’s requests for draft rulings were privately communicated by email.

Trial judges at all levels frequently deal with workload crunch by asking both parties to draft proposed findings and fact and conclusions of law. This is a sensible allocation of labor, since the parties and their attorneys are the most familiar with the underlying facts, and drafting orders is time-intensive. It is commonly understood among litigators that a well-drafted set of proposed findings can provide the bulk of a court’s subsequent order.

But judicial requests for proposed findings should be made on the record, in open court. Ex parte communications of the kind Judge Jacobson apparently engaged in suggest a breach of judicial ethics, or at minimum remarkable irresponsibility.

The state court administrator is investigating the matter, and has ordered that the judge’s emails be preserved for at least seven months.

Berkeley launches Judicial Institute

The University of California, Berkeley has launched a new Judicial Institute to explore the personal and professional issues that judges face. The Institute will be run by the Hon. Jeremy Fogel, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California, and for seven years the head of the Federal Judicial Center.

This is an exciting project, and landing Judge Fogel is a major coup. I’ll look forward to following the Institute’s work in the coming months and years.

Federal courts release Annual Report and latest statistics

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has released its 2017 annual report, which includes a wealth of caseload statistics for the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. It’s a fascinating read for those who like reams of data.

For those who just want the punchline, Law360 gives a good summary:

In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017, case filings fell in federal courts of appeal by 16 percent and in district courts by 7 percent, while petitions to U.S. bankruptcy courts fell by 2 percent, bringing the overall number of cases filed in each of those courts to their lowest levels since at least fiscal year 2013, the report shows.

Since 2013, the number of cases filed in federal appellate courts have dropped by 10.5 percent, while the number filed in district courts have fallen 6 percent and federal bankruptcy petitions have declined by 28.5 percent, according to the data, which pointed to a few factors that impacted the year-on-year decline in each of those courts.

In U.S. district courts, the decline from 2016 was driven by a reduction in civil filings. They fell 8 percent from approximately 291,000 to just under 268,000 from one year to the next, while civil filings per authorized judgeship dropped from 431 in 2016 to 396 in 2017, the report said.

New Hampshire judge who doctored own performance evaluation faces charges

Like many states, New Hampshire conducts periodic performance evaluations of its sitting judges. Those evaluations include surveys of attorneys, court staff, and other individuals and agencies who interact with the judge in a professional capacity. (I have written about the importance of these surveys here.)

Unfortunately, Judge Paul Moore apparently did not have confidence in what his outside reviewers would say about his work. So he allegedly submitted dozens of anonymous survey responses himself, using different computers from around his home and workplace, in order to artificially raise his survey scores. Moore admitted the charges last week.

Moore is currently on administrative leave without pay. The state’s Judicial Conduct Committee will take up his case later this month.

McDonald nomination passes Connecticut House

The controversial nomination of Andrew McDonald to the Chief Justice of Connecticut barely passed the state House of Representatives on Monday, by a 75-74 voted. Several Democrats joined Republican opposition to make the vote extremely close.

McDonald had previously received an “unfavorable” report when his nomination led to a 20-20 committee vote. In the leadup to the House debate, outside groups accused Republicans of opposing McDonald because of his sexual orientation. Republicans again fiercely denied that charge in the House. And indeed, most of the debate centered on McDonald’s decision to join a slim 4-3 court majority which struck down the Connecticut death penalty. That decision spared the lives of two men on death row who had been convicted of killing the wife and daughters of state Rep. William Petit. Petit firmly fought against McDonald’s nomination.

The nomination now moves to the state senate, where Republicans hold a slim effective majority.

 

The new and old style of politics in judicial selection

Earlier I reported on the deadlock in the Connecticut Judiciary Committee over the nomination of Justice Andrew McDonald to become that state’s next Chief Justice. The entire legislature will take up the nomination next Monday. In the meantime, certain trolls have apparently posted homophobic slurs about McDonald on the internet. (McDonald, a former Democratic legislator, is openly gay.) And in response, a left-leaning lobbying group called True Justice has created a digital ad accusing Republican opponents of McDonald’s nomination of “hate” and “homophobia.” The Republican leadership has been insistent that its opposition has nothing to do with McDonald’s sexual orientation, which seems wholly plausible since it was never an issue when McDonald was originally confirmed to the bench five years ago.

To be clear, it certainly does appear that Republican opposition to McDonald’s ascension is politically based — they would prefer someone with more conservative (or less liberal) credentials. This intersection of law and politics is perhaps unavoidable in the modern age, but it still hurts the credibility and perceived impartiality of the judiciary. Legislative Republicans would be better off confirming an accomplished jurist to the position for which he was duly nominated, and liberal agitators would be better off by not trying to turn every policy decision with which they disagree into hysteria and name-calling.

Meanwhile, Hawaii’s federal district court will soon have new judges, thanks in large part to tried-and-true backroom politics. This article lays out the interesting negotiations between the White House and Hawaii’s Democratic senators to get a number of federal judicial nominees confirmed. Score one for the old style of politics.

An example of nomination cascades in Georgia

I recently wrote a post for Prawfsblawg on judicial nomination cascades, in which a sitting judge is elevated to a higher court, leaving a seat on the bench which itself must be filled. Sometimes the cascade stops after the second appointment, but on occasion we see triple or even quadruple cascades, as each seat is subsequently filled with a judge from a lower court. (A commenter to the Prawfsblawg post, for example, noted the Rehnquist-Scalia-Sentelle-Voorhees cascade at the federal level in 1986-87).

Federal nomination cascades often run to the state level, where governors (and occasionally legislatures) typically have authority to fill judicial vacancies by appointment. In recent weeks, the Georgia Court of Appeals has been particularly affected: three judges have been nominated (and two confirmed) for federal positions. With another judge retiring soon, Governor Nathan Deal will have to fill four of the court’s fifteen seats in short order.

Georgians should be proud that their intermediate appellate court has produced so many jurists thought worthy of federal positions. But the state will have to act quickly and carefully to keep the Court of Appeals at full strength.

 

Federal courts ban employees from engaging in partisan campaign activity

The United States Courts have quietly imposed a new ban on campaign donations and partisan political activity by court employees and administrative staff. The new rule went into effect March 1.

An Administrative Office spokesman told the ABA Journal that only “bright-line” partisan activity–not issue advocacy–is prohibited. Moreover, court employees may still donate time and energy to charities, religious organizations, and professional organizations.

This is a sensitive area, which requires a carefully balanced policy. The courts are surely motivated by the need to appear politically neutral and unbiased, a concern that applies to court employees as much as judges. But the “bright line” that the Administrative Office suggests is quickly likely to become blurry in practice. Is a donation to an advocacy group like the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood a partisan activity within the meaning of the new rule? Such organizations are so closely tied in the public mind to a particular political party that they can raise the same specter of partisanship even if the organizations themselves are technically nonpartisan.

There are also First Amendment issues at stake. Federal judges are bound by a Code of Judicial Conduct, which limits their ability to engage in partisan political activity as a matter of professional ethics. But the Supreme Court has concluded that notwithstanding prevailing codes of conduct, state judges retain First Amendment rights to speak on political matters. Court employees (who are not bound by a judicial code) would seem to have an even stronger argument for First Amendment freedoms.

The Administrative Office is keeping the new policy largely internal for now, and has said that it will address individual questions as they come up. I predict that this is likely to turn into a headache for the AO going forward.