dlyon  Dec 29 2004 - 8:59am  Opinion/Editorial   

For years, federal judges have been defending their predilection for educational junkets: all-expense-paid trips to resorts to attend ideologically tilted seminars funded by organizations that also fund litigation in federal courts. The appearance is dreadful, creating embarrassing problems for individual judges. Yet the judiciary has indignantly refused to impose reasonable standards limiting this practice. In May 2003, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt. finally got judges’ attention by threatening legislation. Members of the judiciary’s administrative arm persuaded him to defer his bill — as he put it in a statement at the time — “to allow the judiciary further opportunity to propose self-regulation on these important ethical issues.” Since then, the judiciary has indeed amended the ethical advice it gives judges concerning these seminars, but it weakened controls. Its revised opinion makes it easier for judges to attend seminars in more ethically dicey situations and easier to hide who’s paying for the trips.
We don’t object to judges attending private seminars, particularly those run by academic and bar institutions. Far from it. Continuing education for judges is a good thing, and at least some of these programs appear serious and useful. But when judges go to school, the government ought to pay their way. They should not be in the position of taking seminar-vacations on someone else’s dime.
Under the old guidance, judges were instructed that it “would be improper to participate in such a seminar if the sponsor, or source of funding, is involved in litigation, or likely to be so involved, and the topics covered in the seminar are likely to be in some manner related to the subject matter of such litigation.” Moreover, the opinion said that judges “must report the reimbursement of expenses and the value of the gift on their financial disclosure reports.” These requirements hardly seem onerous. Indeed, the problem arose because these strictures were not tight enough. But the judiciary nonetheless found them an irritating encumbrance; last year, it even instructed judges to avoid reporting the value of their trips.
Now, having promised Leahy to get its act together, the judiciary has relaxed the ethical strictures further. The new opinion says that “It would be improper for a judge to attend a seminar if the sponsor or source of substantial funding for the seminar is a litigant before the judge and the topics covered in the seminar are directly related to the subject matter of the litigation.” “Substantial,” “directly” — these are weasel words, the effect of which is that judges can too easily accept handsome gifts funded by parties with a stake in those judges’ rulings. Maybe they know how bad this looks, because the new opinion scraps the previous one’s insistence on disclosure of the value of these trips, contenting itself with reminding judges to “be mindful of their financial disclosure obligations.”
This is hardly the self-policing the judiciary promised. The courts’ administrative arm, in a statement, said the new guidance “is intended to present a more thorough and thoughtful treatment of the issues” so as to give judges “factors and considerations to weigh in reaching what must be individual and case-by-case determinations.” What it actually gives is permission to take trips on the dime of entities with active interests in actual cases and then hide the value of those gifts.
— Washington Post