Legal News

WASHINGTON - Three prominent federal appellate judges are on the board of an anti-regulation group that provides free seminars and trips to judges, although an ethics opinion says such service violates judicial rules designed to avoid favoritism.  One of the judges is Edith Brown Clement of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, who was on President George W. Bush's short list for a Supreme Court nomination in 2005. The others are the current and prior chief judges for the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alice Batchelder and Danny Boggs.  The three judges are board members of the Montana-based Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, or FREE...Another federal judge, Andre Davis, who now sits on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., quit the board in 2005 after he sought and received an opinion from the federal judiciary's Committee on Codes of Conduct. Two other judges resigned at the same time