The Rules Judges Must Follow

Judges in America have rules they must follow. Actually, not exactly rules
but Canons. For 23 years, I’ve heard of “Judicial Canons”
– 3 in law school and 20 as a lawyer. But, up until today, I never
looked up the definition of “canon”. So, here is what I read,
“The part of the Mass beginning after the Preface and Sanctus and
ending just before the Lord’s Prayer.”

That doesn’t sound right, so I clicked on another definition, “the
most solemn and unvarying part of the Mass including the consecration
of the bread and wine”. I don’t know if that is a step in the
right direction, but I do like the wine part. One more click, “a
fundamental principle or general rule:
the canons of goodbehavior.“ Now, we are getting somewhere. Good behavior.

Next step, dig into Ohio’s Canons for judges. There are 4. Don’t
want to overwhelm the judges with too many Canons.

Canon 1: A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity,
and impartiality of the judiciary and shall avoid impropriety and the
appearance of impropriety.

Canon 2: A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially,
competently, and diligently.

Canon 3: A judge shall conduct the judge’s personal and extrajudicial
activities so as to minimize the risk of conflict with the obligations
of judicial office.

Canon 4: A judge or judicial candidate shall not engage in political or
campaign activity that is inconsistent with the independence, integrity,
or impartiality of the judiciary.

I am going to explore these 4 Canons over the next week or so and I’ll
start with #4. Quite timely because we have Decision 2012 in a fortnight.

Canon 4 has five Rules. Each Rule has many comments to explain the Rules
that are used to define each Canon. Comments nest inside Rules that nest
inside Canons. There is so much nesting going on that I am only going
to focus on
Rule #1 inside Canon #4.

Judges can campaign but they just can’t tell you how they feel or would
rule on say, abortion or the reliability of breath testing machines. They
can be general but not too specific. That is a mighty fine tight rope
to walk. They cannot promise to be a certain way on issues. Is anyone
paying attention to this over the last 2 decades of Ohio Supreme Court
battles? Personal views are not prohibited but somehow we, the electorate,
are supposed to believe that a judge will divorce his or her personal
values and beliefs when it comes time to construe a statute?

I could never figure out how a judge can go in front of the Editorial Board
of the Columbus Dispatch or Plain Dealer and come out with an endorsement
without violating, somehow, this Rule. How a person will vote on highly
controversial topics such as tort reform is exactly why the editor of
the newspaper wants you in front of them to begin with.

If you are still reading this and haven’t fallen asleep yet, you are
going to have to wait for me to plow through Rules 2 and 3 before we get
to the fun one – Solicitations for Money.