Federal judges who look at surveys on sexism or power in power have used an escape: retire or resign, and the investigation disappears. A new bill could end the practice.
The member of the Congress Hank Johnson, a Democrat in Georgia who presented the bill, said that judges and courts should not “sweep the bad behavior under the carpet”. Nine other Democrats, including the New York high-level representative, New York representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, co-law.
The two -page proposal would add a language to the federal laws concerning judicial complaints, claiming that investigations should occur “without regard to resignation, retirement … or to the death of the judge whose conduct is the subject of the complaint”.
Aliza Shatzman founded the draft legal responsibility after having experienced what she described as harassment and reprisals while working for a judge, said that she was working with Johnson's office on the bill. She said that people of the federal judiciary told her that their hands were bound once a judge left.
“It would detach these hands,” she said. “Theoretically, this is something they should support.”
She hopes that the Republicans will support the bill because judicial misconduct has no political party. “People named Democrats and Republicans mistreat their clerks,” she said.
The bill faces uncertain perspectives if it does not obtain the support of the GOP. The Republicans of the Chamber, including the Judicial Committee, focused on the adoption of the legislation to allow President Donald Trump to repress immigrants.
Richard Painter, an expert from the government-ethics, formerly affiliated to one of the groups, supporting the bill, said that it is possible that the judiciary would oppose the measure because judges consider themselves capable of monitoring their own conduct.
“You can't just say that the separation of powers means that there are no checks and counterweights,” he said. “I don't buy these arguments, but you might hear these arguments.”
Johnson’s office said that the judges accused of sexual harassment had resigned, from which José Antonio fusted in 2016 and Alex Kozinski in 2017, before the disciplinary process could take his course. More recently, a federal judge in Alaska, Joshua, resigned, resigned after an investigation revealed that he had made inappropriate sexual comments to his staff and began sex with one of her clerks after she became a prosecutor.
Kozinski said it was “never my intention” to make his clerks uncomfortable. Business Insider could not contact Furté.
Historically, the judges and their clerks had close relations; A 1992 article on 1992 law Described how the clerks of a judge would spend the night at home and kept his grandchildren. There is now much more control over such relationships and the potential for overwork and exploitation of clerks and staff.
Sometimes allegations reach the level of official complaints and the courts take action. Judge Pauline Newman, a member of a Federal Court of Appeal who hears intellectual property disputes with high issues, fights for her work after some employees have expressed themselves by her mental health. Several other lawyers and judges have said that Newman was lively and accused of other judges of reacting excessively.
Last year, the legal journalist David LAT reported that a judge appointed to Florida was criticized on the decisions she made in one of her criminal affairs lost two clerks On heavy workloads and what an employee said to friends was a “nasty” driving. And Shatzman wrote on the website above the law that a federal judge in Minnesota left the bench After being accused of mistreatment and response against employees.
A representative of the Republicans of the Chamber's Judicial Committee did not respond to a request for comments.
