John Fund reports on an effort by certain Senators, including the normally sensible Jon Kyl, to restrict the ability of federal judges to obtain continuing legal education and to appear at private law schools where they might educate others. The effort takes the form of an amendment to legislation raising the pay of federal judges. The amendment would ban federal judges from attending non-government or bar association-sponsored seminars and educational programs. It would also cap at $5,000 the amount judges may receive annually in reimbursement for travel, meals etc. for speaking engagements, and at $1,500 the amount they may receive per speaking engagement unless the funding comes from the federal or State government or a bar association.

The general effect of the amendment would be to make it difficult for anyone other than bar associations to have programs at which judges appear. One specific effect would likely be to shut down George Mason’s highly respected programs for training judges in, among other areas, the intersection of law and economics.

Though the left has been railing against the George Mason programs for years, Fund points out that judges of all persuasions have found them invaluable. For example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who attended two such programs, wrote: “For lifting the veil on such mysteries as regression analysis, and for advancing both learning and collegial relationships among federal judges, my enduring appreciation." And, though critics like Russ Feingold, who is sponsoring the amendment along with Kyl, argue that the George Mason programs represent "a way for corporations to reach out to judges," Fund notes that corporate sponsors account for less than 10 percent of the budget for George Mason's seminars, and lecturers address only general principles of how the law intersects with economics, not specific controversial issues.

There’s no mystery as to why liberal Senators like Feingold wish to hand a monopoly on judge’s appearances and judge's continuing legal education to the public sector and, above all, to liberal bar groups. Feingold well understands that the less judges know, especially about economics, the more likely they are to issue knee-jerk decisions informed more by emotion than by sound reasoning.

Why Senator Kyl has thrown in with Feingold is less clear. Perhaps he believes that judges should have to give up “junkets” as a condition of receiving their pay increase. But under the amendment, judges won’t have to give up junkets; they will only have to give up non-bar-Association-sponsored junkets, thus leaving themselves at the mercy of the official Judicial Conference programs, which tilt left.

Nor is do ethical considerations militate in favor of the amendment, since these concerns are met by existing disclosure requirements. The Ethics in Government Act already requires judges to include any reimbursements that the amendment would cover on their annual financial disclosure forms as reportable gifts unless they amount to less than $305. Moreover the Judicial Conference has just adopted a rule requiring any non-bar association and non-government sponsored judicial education program attended by a federal judge for which the judge receives a reimbursement over $305 to disclose every speaker and all sources of funding for the program. The rule also bars judges from attending any program where such disclosures were not made. Finally it requires judges who attend such a program to report to the clerk of their court within 30 days. The clerk must then make available on the court’s website the dates of attendance, the name of the program provider(s), and the title of the educational program.

So, Russ Feingold and a Republican Senator from Arizona are co-sponsoring “ethics” legislation where disclosure provisions are plainly sufficient to accomplish their legitimate goals. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.

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Posted by Paul at 9:53 PM  |    |