Good for the Goose, But Not the Gander: Judicial Ethics Hypocrisy in the Supreme Court and Federal Courts

Recent revelations about book royalties, travel and other monetary and in-kind benefits individual Justices have received has shined a bright light on the judicial ethics and disclosure rules that apply to the federal judiciary, but not to the Supreme Court. Ironically, while the Supreme Court generally has exempted itself from scrutiny, near identical situations to the ethics-recusal situations confronting Supreme Court justices result in ethics problems for lower court judges, sometimes even by order of the Supreme Court itself no less. And similarly some lawyers have faced legal ethics charges for having challenged federal judges for alleged violations of the law and the rules of judicial ethics. Peter Afrasiabi helps to navigate the shifting sands of the judicial ethics and disclosure regimes as they apply to the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts and offers some predictions about potential future reforms by the Court and Congress.