More than 130 federal judges have violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which they or their family owned stock.
Nothing bars judges from owning stocks, but federal law since 1974 has prohibited judges from hearing cases that involve a party in which they, their spouses or their minor children have a "Legal or equitable interest, however small." That law and the Judicial Conference of the U.S., which is the federal courts' policy-making body, require judges to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.
The Journal reviewed financial disclosure forms filed annually for 2010 through 2018 by roughly 700 federal judges who reported holding individual stocks of large companies, and then compared those holdings to tens of thousands of court dockets in civil cases.
The ethics code for federal judges "Requires recusal when a judge has a financial conflict, regardless of the substance of the judge's actual involvement in the case," the Judicial Conference's Committee on Codes of Conduct wrote in a letter to a judge this month.
No judges in modern times have been removed from the federal bench solely for having a financial interest in a plaintiff or defendant that appeared in their courtroom.
Those rulings favored the judges' financial interests in 94 cases, went against the judges' interest in 27 cases and had mixed outcomes in 24 cases.
Federal district judges draw an annual salary of $218,600, which isn't much more than a first-year attorney at a top-tier law firm earns.
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a Financial Interest
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