NCPE Town Hall Meeting

Join us on June 28, 2008 for the Third NCPE Town Hall Meeting.

NCPE in the News: 2008

"Court Hopeful Says Consultant Pitched Deal" (Las Vegas Review Journal)

"Given $50,000 He Decides to Run" (Las Vegas Sun)

Acting President Julie Tousa on Jon Ralston's "Face to Face: Ethics Complaint"

Meet the Acting President of NCPE, Julie Tousa

"New Watchdog of Public Ethics Continues Enforcing Vital Unwritten Law" (Las Vegas Review Journal)

"Partying Away As Taxpayers Pay and Pay" (Las Vegas Sun)

Ethics Legislation 2007

NCPE at the 2007 Nevada State Legislature: Summary and Details

"Article 6 Commission" to study and recommend improvements in the Nevada judiciary
See Dr. Craig Walton's summary of May Meeting

NCPE statement about the danger of big donors contributing to Supreme Court justice election campaigns.

Judicial Ethics & the Complaint Processes

Craig Walton's letter, to the Las Vegas Business Journal in favor of the new plan for judicial selection

Candidate Pledge

Email NCPE Treasurer

Judicial Accountability - panel discussion May 4, 2007, sponsored by the Federalist Society

Go to Judicial Accountability News

Judicial Corruption , panel discussion May 4, 2007, sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Panelists: Bill Remple, Los Angeles Times; Prof. Jeff Stempel, UNLV Boyd School of Law; Si Prishna Prakash, University of San Diego School of Law. Moderator, Prof. Tuan Samahon, UNLV Boyd School of Law. (U.S. Dept. Of Justice was invited to take part, declined).

Questions to the panel: What is role of the press in facing these issues? Why does Nevada get special attention? What about mandatory recusal? When there are contributors in the court? Is there an alternative to impeachment?

1. Bill Remple: Daylight stops injustice. In the Blackstone system, judges heard cases of former clients - conflict of interest was everywhere, leading to distrust. Looking at 50,000 cases over 20 years, one example is DUI cases getting preferential treatment every time. Our LA Times story was very costly to do, involving 2 years of travel, and people being unwilling to talk about judges. Here [ in southern Nevada] it is common to rationalize conflicts of interest. Victims [of injustice] are often from California, so are startled to treated like this. Nevada has oversight of gambling, but NOT of judges.

2. Prof. Jeff Stemple: Current provisions and practices for recusal [when in a conflict of interest] are very barely useful. [the latest ABA Code on this is at USC sec. 455 A & B, invoking the reasonable person standard to sort out whether the judge not recusing would look like bias toward one of the parties to the lawsuit]. But here, the judges' culture emphasizes "the duty to sit" because there had been a public perception of judges being lazy. So that duty is in NV. Code and also the ABA Code still has it. And this overrides USC sec. 455 AB. We WANT the perception of fairness, so, we need to change the latest ABA Code.

So he advocates mandatory recusal from trials with campaign contributors; and what about lawyers who contribute? The lawyer will get a yes or a no and go on, but the litigant is the main beneficiary [if there is bias] or the main loser. Why do we say yes [we want recusal in conflict situations], but not Yes [because we stress the duty to sit, no matter who is in the court] ? We have dumbed down our standards here.
The new ABA Model Code includes judges as having [a] the 1st Amendment right to talk, as in People' s Party of Wisconsin vs. US . It also [b] shows a cultural shift because it takes the duty to sit as a dinosaur; we are advised to shift to the reasonable person standard.

3. Prof. Prishna Prakash: The Nevada Judicial Discipline [he says Ethics ] Commission now allows a spouse to contribute . So it is very restrained about recusal, leaving very little of it. We need to change the hydraulics.
How do the Federal and Nevada Constitutions deal with bad judges? [a] first remedy is impeachment, but it is rarely used; [b] prosecution is a remedy, even to a jail term; and [c] there is a " good behavior clause" , which is similar to " no removal without cause" . Do the trial [for violation], show the evidence of misbehavior. A statute would be required to spell this out, and then doing it would square with the Constitution.

4. Prof. Tuan Samahon: there is a clubby sociology of Bar and Bench versus Federal Public Integrity prosecutors. See the dissent in Repubican Party v. White, as to how and why the judiciary is not to be characterized or regulated in the way equivalent to that appropriate to a legislature.

Question: How do performance evaluation commission? Stempel: start with listing the best practices.

Question: How compose that commission? Samahon: one state has it already [actually, I think 20].

Question: how get 60% approval at retention election if appointed under SJR2? That judge will need money. And so too, then, that judge will have to face the recusal questions raised.

Comment: Stempel - the elected vs. appointed debate is less responsive to public demand than is the public demand for fairness. Judge Mahan campaigned to get the federal appointment [to get from elected to appointed, but knowing no appointive standard would rule him out, because not delving in to conflicts of interest].

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