Following years of scandals
and awful press, last month Pennsylvania's Supreme Court unanimously updated
its Code of Judicial Conduct.
The new amendments require Pennsylvania's
450 elected judges to quit corporate boards, bar them from hiring relatives, and
force them to withdraw from cases involving lawyers who have made substantial donations
to their judicial election campaign.
These amendments are the
first since 1992 and scheduled to take effect in July 2015.
Recent Abuses
In 2013, Pennsylvania state
Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin resigned after using her elected office
and taxpayer-funded staff for political purposes and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation is probing into referral fees earned by the top aide and wife of
state Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery.
In 2009, a federal grand jury
returned a 48 count indictment against two former Luzerne County judges who
were later convicted in connection with the “kids for cash” scandal.
Further, until recently, Carbon
County's president judge also served on the board of the county's largest bank
and may have presided over matters involving the bank he served.
Scope of Judicial Conduct Code's Amendments
Pennsylvania's state court
judges are elected, not appointed, and the Code of Judicial Conduct comprises the
code of ethics governing their conduct. While
not forming criminal statutes, Pennsylvania judges have been suspended and removed
for Judicial Conduct Code violations.
Forming the first revision
since 1992, the updated Judicial Conduct Code is modeled after a 2007 American
Bar Association version and is nearly three times the previous Code's length.
A substantial addition to the
Code includes language expressly prohibiting nepotism stating that “[i]n making
administrative appointments and hiring decisions, a judge: shall exercise the
power of appointment impartially and on the basis of merit; and shall avoid
nepotism, favoritism, and unnecessary appointments.”
Presently both Chief Justice Ronald
D. Castille and Justice McCaffery have their wives employed as their top aides
and the change is silent on immediate family members currently employed by the
judiciary.
A provision has also been
added explicitly prohibiting the “use of court staff, facilities, or other
court resources in a campaign for judicial office.” Judges will now also be prohibited from
sitting on corporate boards. Additionally,
judges will be required to recuse themselves from cases where a party, a
party’s lawyer, or the law firm of a party’s lawyer has made a direct or
indirect campaign contribution in an “amount that would raise a reasonable
concern about the fairness or impartiality of the judge’s consideration.”
The majority of the Judicial
Conduct Code new provisions will take effect on July 1, 2014 and Judges will be
expected to resign from corporate boards by July 1, 2015.
