Litigation

Ethics of Justice?s Gift-Taking Questioned in PA

By Peter Hardin

Pennsylvania’s chief justice enjoyed a hotel room and dinners for himself and his wife in New York City during a  December meeting of the Pennsylvania Society, thanks to the largesse of a Philadelphia law firm picking up the $1,900 tab.

In addition, Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille “routinely accepts dinners, plane rides, tickets to sporting events, and rounds of golf from lawyers and businessmen, some of them with cases that go before the court, his disclosures show,” according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article.

This investigative article doesn’t allege wrongdoing by the state’s top judge, and it notes that a review of his court decisions does not reflect favoritism.

Yet it shines a spotlight on serious ethics questions that are raised when judges are permitted to accept gifts from litigants, and it points out that jurists further down in Pennsylvania’s “judicial hierarchy” face far stricter rules.

“There’s no reason a judge or any public official should be taking gifts,” said Samuel C. Stretton, an attorney who practices law in the state and lectures on legal ethics. “How can you be truly fair if you are breaking bread with people and they are paying for it?”

Justice Castille said in a statement quoted by the newspaper that he and other court members were committed to “transparency.” They are required to report gifts with a value of $250 or more. He also said the court was looking at changes made in the American Bar Association’s model ethics code.

The statement said, “To date, in my 17 years on the Supreme Court, no party has sought recusal on the basis of my financial disclosures.”

Ethics experts want to see jurists avoid taking any gifts that might suggest even the appearance of a conflict of interests.

“Pennsylvania clearly has to come into the 21st century,” said Lynn Marks, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, a Justice at Stake partner.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 23, 2010 (boomark / email).