Fallout from Wall Street Journal investigation includes a proposed law that would make financial disclosures more transparent
Two months ago, the federal judiciary came under fire after a Wall Street Journal investigation found 131 judges — including two in San Diego — had failed to disqualify themselves from hearing cases involving companies in which they or their families held stock.
The revelations have spurred a bipartisan effort in Washington calling for greater transparency and accountability among federal judges when it comes to publicly reporting their stock ownership and their obligation to recuse when there is a conflict.
While the Wall Street Journal’s investigation found no evidence that judges were intentionally deciding cases to bolster their own finances, lawmakers and experts stressed that even the appearance of impropriety can be enough to shake the public’s confidence in the judiciary.
“The damage has been done,” Georgia Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson — chair of the House’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet — concluded at a hearing last month.
The subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Darrell Issa, is among the bicameral group of legislators spearheading a push for reform by co-sponsoring the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which is already moving through Congress.
“The administration of law and order rests upon the unbiased and unwavering work of judges — and that’s why we must maintain an impartial and evenhanded judiciary,” Issa, a Republican serving much of eastern San Diego County, said in a statement.
The proposed law seeks to address part of the failures exposed in the Journal’s extensive reporting, which involved journalists reviewing nine years of financial disclosure forms from about 700 judges compiled by the Free Law Project, a nonpartisan legal-research nonprofit. The Journal then compared the data to tens of thousands of civil court dockets to ascertain if judges had presided over lawsuits despite apparent conflicts of interest.
The investigation found that 131 judges had improperly failed to excuse themselves from overseeing 685 cases from 2010 to 2018. The companies involved included such giants as Exxon Mobil, Comcast, Ford Motor Co. and Microsoft.
U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino in San Diego was among the handful of judges highlighted. She had the second-highest number of conflicts — 54 — behind a Texas judge’s 138.
While judicial financial disclosure forms are public record, they are not readily accessible for inspection and can take more than a year to be released upon request. Furthermore, judges are only required to submit their financial disclosures once per year under current law.
Source: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2021-11-29/law-judicial-financial-disclosures