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Judicial Ethics

It’s frustrating when appealing to heaven is your only chance.

It would be both easy, and simultaneously anything but easy, to write directly about yet more ethics issues surrounding Justice Alito and whether he has any business hearing certain cases and the continuing dilemma of having there be no mechanism for enforcing any judicial ethics rules as against the United States Supreme Court. Easy because […]

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Judicial Ethics

The Bare Necessities

Let’s just blow past the usual excuses when I go this long without posting and jump right in instead. Ok? Great. Today, the United States Supreme Court has adopted and released a Code of Judicial Ethics to which they say they will adhere. You can read the whole thing here. Having written a few times […]

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Judicial Ethics Legal ethics

Sauce for the goose but not for the gander

A quick and also rare weekend post because I’ve been tied up a bit and am about to be tied up again and unable to post for a week or so. I’ve sallied forth at length here about what I see to be pretty disingenuous attacks based on First Amendment arguments against adopting ABA Model […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics Legal ethics

Secret recordings can be good. Electing judges kind of can’t.

So, the reasons secret recordings will always happen in “one-party” recording states is that they get to the truth. Lots of people do not like them though. And judges absolutely loathe the notion of being secretly recorded. They do not like them so much that sometimes no matter what the secret recording reveals they will […]

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Judicial Ethics

Doubting Thomas.

An alternate, much longer, but likely much more salient title for this post is “What’s a democracy supposed to do when a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice is okay with democracy being threatened?” That’s right kids, today we are going to talk a bit about judicial ethics and remind everyone that we currently do […]

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Judicial Ethics

A brief personal announcement

It’s a new month and, for me, a new professional era. I have been privileged to work over the last 23 years for three excellent law firms ranging in size from 50+ lawyers to more than 300 or so. From my early years with Armstrong Allen all the way through the last 8 years at […]

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Judicial Ethics

Blasts from the past.

First, just a heads up that there will be some design changes taking place here at Faughnan on Ethics around the beginning of October 2022 so keep an eye out for that. Second, I know I haven’t written about anything recently but today is a day to knock out bunch of updates on things that […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

Speaking of public censures …

Today we get the chance to write about something that truly is a rare event — the imposition of public discipline against a sitting federal judge. And it is a story that when you reach the end of it leaves you feeling like the punishment was not really harsh enough but also very aware of […]

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Judicial Ethics

It’s hard to keep up with all the bad new laws Tennessee is cooking up.

As the title indicates, Tennessee – like almost all states under a Republican stranglehold – is currently experiencing a wave of legislative efforts to roll back progress on civil rights while also trying to make it difficult to vote them out of office by … making it more difficult for minorities to vote and have […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

NFT = No From Tennessee

I am about to write a series of statements that are each fairly described as, if you will allow me to use the technical, legal term, “bananas.” People with way too much money on their hands are spending actual money on things called Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”). NFTs are – in laymen’s terms – unique electronic-only […]