I know that I'm an outlier on this, but I think judges should be required to recuse themselves if they know any of the attorneys representing any of the parties more than casually. If you've ever had dinner together, you shouldn't be allowed to decide their case.
just throwing things out there, but there really should be a moratorium on judges handling cases litigated by their former firm/employer for some reasonable period. two years? three years?
i would rather not haver to consider whether i want to take a case litigated by the judge's former colleagues.
The thing is that such a rule makes a lot more sense where you live (NYC area) than where I do (greater Minnesota) and it's hard to say that a rule like that should apply in some places but not others.
Understandable, but even in rural areas I don't think it's great when attorneys become judges and then continue to fraternize with attorneys they knew before they were judges who appear before them.
I completely agree. It's just that the one judge in a county of 15,000 people is probably extremely well acquainted with every one of the ten lawyers in the county and it's not practical to say that the judge needs to recuse, while that would be very reasonable in NYC or Chicago or wherever.
Very uncomfortable. And at least where I am I have quite a bit of faith that the judges generally aren't making (at least consciously) biased decisions. But sometimes it's "opposing counsel screwed up to their detriment/should be sanctioned/etc." and that is a very heavy lift and does not feel fair.
Also where judges are elected, it's hard to see how this would be a practical rule. To be elected, you often need to be seen out in the community making contacts and being part of the social structure of the jurisdiction, and excluding a whole swath of professionals from that process would be hard.
Judges are technically elected here in New York; in reality, political parties and the court system sit down and agree on slates of candidates who run unopposed.
In Minnesota it's that judges are elected every six years, but races are rarely contested and judges almost never leave their replacement to be chosen by the voters.
In what I think was the last time a Minnesota Supreme Court justice left a seat to be filled in the first instance by an election, we elected a former NFL player. (It was Alan Page, who was a great justice.)
