Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here.
Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.
Hi from Denver, where I am attending the National Conference on Trusteeship hosted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB). It’s not a typical destination for legal ethicists—pretty sure I’m the only one in attendance—but many of the panels and presentations intersect with themes from my scholarship like the ethical obligations of institutions and their leaders. (I’m here in my capacity as the Vice Chair of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.) One highlight was a talk by David Rabban (Texas) about his book Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right. It was especially wonderful to finally meet Jackie Gardina in person. Back in early 2024, she interviewed me on her podcast Side Bar with Mitchel Winick about my book Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Access to Justice. At the time she served as Dean of the Colleges of Law (Santa Barbara and Ventura) and she now is the Senior Director of Institution and System Programs at AGB.
As I mentioned last week, PrawfsBlawg has been hosting an online symposium about a new book by Elizabeth Burch (Georgia), The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Law Suit Factory. Other contributors include Brooke Coleman (Seattle), Miriam Giles (Northwestern), Tony Sebok (Cardozo), Howard Wasserman (FIU), and Brad Wendel (Cornell). My post goes live today, and Burch gets the final word later this week. And if you missed last Wednesday’s event hosted by Hofstra Law’s Monroe H. Freedman Center for the Study of Legal Ethics and Fordham Law’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics where I spoke about the new book from Ray Brescia (Albany) Lawyer 3.0: A Guide to Next-Wave Lawyering, a recording should soon be available.
Now for the headlines.
Highlights from Last Week – Top Ten Headlines 📰
#1 “Some Judges See Risks in Fiery Opinions Warning of Threats to Democracy.” From the New York Times: “Judges are turning up the volume. One compared her district’s ballooning caseload to a demigod’s battle against a mythological monster. Another sought to buttress his argument against National Guard deployments to U.S. cities with a YouTube link to a 1970 protest song. A third compared the Trump administration’s rewriting of American history to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel ‘1984.’ More and more federal judges have been setting aside their profession’s traditional, restrained style of opinion writing in favor of an emotive, populist approach, giving full vent to the intensity of their concerns about cases flooding their dockets since President Trump returned to office.” Read more here (gift link).
#2 “Johnson & Johnson Gets Beasley Allen Tossed From Talc Cases.” From Bloomberg Law: “Beasley Allen, one of the leading trial firms taking on Johnson & Johnson in the sprawling multi-district talc litigation, has been disqualified by a federal court. Thursday’s ruling from a New Jersey federal magistrate judge removes the Alabama-based firm from the litigation, in which customers claim J&J talc products are responsible for their ovarian cancer. The decision sprang from a request from J&J after Beasley Allen met with a former lawyer for the medical products company in a mediation which the company said was tantamount to a lawyer switching sides. Beasley Allen was disqualified from hundreds of New Jersey-based state court cases in February. ‘Disqualification is a remedy courts are not quick to administer,’ US District Court for the District of New Jersey Magistrate Judge Rukhsanah L. Singh said in her opinion. ‘Yet, there are moments when it is necessary when balancing the equities and interests. This is such a moment.’” Read more here.
#3 “Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Sit Out Supreme Court Cases.” From Newsweek: “Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito did not participate in the decision making of two different cases and while it may be known why Alito decided to recuse himself, it’s less clear the reasoning behind Gorsuch’s decision. Supreme Court justices, who aren’t required to explain why they’re sitting out of a case, tend to sit them out when there’s a conflict of interest. That could be because of a financial stake in the case through stocks they own, a personal relationship or that they were involved in the case as a judge before they joined the court.” Read more here.
#4 “House Panel Finds Florida Democrat Guilty of Ethics Violations.” From NPR: “The House Ethics Committee has found ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick violated House rules, after a rare marathon public hearing Thursday night. The Florida Democrat [and lawyer] was indicted in November over allegations she stole $5 million in disaster relief funds and used it to bankroll her 2021 special election campaign. Federal prosecutors allege she funneled money to support her campaign using FEMA overpayments distributed to Trinity Healthcare services, her family’s company. She pleaded not guilty. ‘After careful deliberation that lasted until well past midnight, the adjudicatory subcommittee found that Counts 1-15 and 17-26 of the SAV [Statement of Alleged Violations] had been proven,’ a committee statement read. Cherfilus-McCormick has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. ‘I look forward to proving my innocence,’ she said in a statement to NPR Friday morning.” Read more here.
#5 “Sexual Misconduct Report Leaves I.C.C.’s Path Ahead Unclear.” From the New York Times: “In a report obtained by The New York Times, a panel of judges found that evidence of sexual misconduct by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court left room for ‘reasonable doubt.’” Read more here (gift link).
#6 “Attorney at Social Media Addiction Trial Takes Selfie, Receives $1,100 Sanction.” From the ABA Journal: “A plaintiffs lawyer recently received a $1,100 sanction for taking a selfie and conducting a Zoom interview from inside the Los Angeles Superior Court during the first trial alleging that Meta Platforms and YouTube caused addictions in adolescents.” Read more here.
#7 “98-Year-Old US Judge Loses Another Challenge to Her Suspension.” From Reuters: “The federal court system’s governing body on Tuesday rejected another bid by U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, who at 98 years old is the oldest active federal judge, to overturn her ongoing suspension from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Judicial Conference of the United States’ Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability upheld the Federal Circuit’s decision from last year to extend Newman’s suspension after she allegedly stonewalled her court’s investigation into her fitness to serve.” Read more here.
#8 “Nome Judge Will Resign Following Lengthy Investigation Into Misconduct Allegations.” From the Anchorage Daily News: “Nome Superior Court Judge Romano DiBenedetto will resign, effective April 1, a spokesperson for the Alaska Court System said Friday. A year ago, the Alaska Court System placed DiBenedetto on leave after court staff reported behavior including incidents when the judge used offensive accents to impersonate people from other ethnic groups and kept a courtroom of people waiting while he watched a sports game on TV. In February, after a lengthy investigation, the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended that DiBenedetto receive a reprimand from the Alaska Supreme Court, which has ultimate authority over discipline for judges. The recommendation stopped short of advising that DiBenedetto face a harsher punishment, such as being removed from the bench.” Read more here.
#9 “LSB Introduces Hierarchy in Lawyers’ Ethical Duties.” From LegalFutures (UK): “New requirements to strengthen ethical standards now expressly state that lawyers must place their duties to the court, and to act with independence and integrity, above the duty to act in the best interests of their client, where they conflict. The Legal Services Board’s statutory statement of policy on upholding professional ethical duties also makes clear that they apply to all staff working within law firms and not just authorised lawyers. The statement of policy, published today after consultation, sets out a definition of ‘professional ethical duties.” Read more here.
#10 “Honing Legal Judgment: How Professional Acumen & Fiduciary Care Can Keep Lawyers Relevant in the Age of AI.” From Thompson Reuters: “The special relevance of lawyers in the age of AI is the profession’s enduring value around the unique human capacity for independent judgment, fiduciary care, and preserving the law’s connection to justice and human dignity.” Read more here.
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Renee Knake Jefferson holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston. Check out more of her writing at the Legal Ethics Roundup. Find her on X (formerly Twitter) at @reneeknake or Bluesky at legalethics.bsky.social.
The post Legal Ethics Roundup: Lawyer Court Selfie Sanction, J&J Conflict Disqualification, House Rep Ethics Violations, Alito/Gorsuch Recusals, Fiery Judicial Opinions, LSB’s New Ethics Hierarchy & More appeared first on Above the Law.
