WASHINGTON — Federal courts need to do much better at enforcing conflict-of-interest laws that are supposed to prevent judges from deciding cases in which they hold stock, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in his year-end report on the judiciary.
He was responding to a report in the Wall Street Journal in September that found that between 2010 and 2018, federal judges participated in 685 cases involving companies in which they or their spouses held stock. When contacted, many of them said they were unaware of the stock holdings because a money manager handled their investments.
The chief justice said federal law requires judges to recuse themselves from a case in which they have a direct financial interest, no matter how small.
“Let me crystal clear: the Judiciary takes this matter seriously. We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards, and those judges violated an ethics rule,” he wrote. “We are duty-bound to strive for 100% compliance because public trust is essential, not incidental, to our function. Individually, judges must be scrupulously attentive to both the letter and spirit of our rules, as most are.”
He said the failure of computer software designed to prevent such things or a “progressed ignorance of the ethics rules” is no excuse. Most judges rely on a computer program to alert them when a case coming before them includes a company in which they hold stock. Sometimes, a company slips by the software if it is a subsidiary of a larger corporation.
Roberts said that may explain some lapses, but it does not work for judges who had multiply violations. For them, “there is a more serious problem of inadequate ethics training.... Collectively, our ethics training programs need to be more rigorous. That means more class time, webinars, and consultations. But it also requires greater attention to promoting a culture of compliance, even when busy dockets keep judicial calendars full,” he said.
He noted, however, that ethics violations appear to be rare. Of the 2.5 million civil cases handed by federal district courts in the nine years that were examined, he said the 686 violations account for less than three hundredths of 1%. “That’s a 99.97% compliance rate,” he said. Moreover, he said the newspaper story did not report that “the judge’s actions in any of those cases — often judge routine docket management — actually financially benefited the judge,” he said.
The chief justice said the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts is working on improvements to technology and better training to deal with the problem.
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Judges are not prohibited from owning direct shares of stock. If shares are held indirectly in mutual funds, judges are not required to step aside.
He did not suggest imposing penalties for repeat violators. For the most part, federal judges are responsible for deciding when they should remove themselves from a case.
As part of his duties, Roberts serves as the leader of the federal judiciary.
A Gallup poll released earlier this week found that Roberts earned the highest job approval rating of 11 U.S. leaders in a survey taken in early December, with 60% approving of how he is handling his role.
The only two other leaders who were viewed positively by a majority of Americans were Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell (53%) and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (52%).
Roberts was the only one of the government leaders who received majority approval from both Republicans (57%) and Democrats (52%).
He fared much better than the elected leaders in the poll. President Biden was approved by 43%, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by 40% and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell by 34%.
