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Mass. Eases Rules on Public Comment by Judges

By Robert J. Ambrogi

The public distrusts the courts. Don't just take my word for it. That was the conclusion of a major conference a decade ago convened by the American Bar Association, the National Center for State Courts, and others. A key contributor to this distrust, the conference concluded, is media misunderstanding of the courts. Media understanding and public understanding go hand-in-hand. The media's misunderstanding of the courts, in turn, is fueled by the lack of communication between judges and journalists. Judges fear journalists and journalists fear judges. As retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Hiller Zobel once said about judges' fear of speaking to reporters, "The attitude of some judges is like that of [former Ohio State football] coach Woody Hayes, who said about the forward pass that three things can happen, and two of them are bad." If Zobel is right, then one of those bad things is that a judge who speaks to a journalist may end up overstepping an ethical boundary that limits the ability of judges to comment on cases publicly. Cognizant of this concern, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appointed an ad hoc committee two years ago to study whether the state should ease its limits on judicial...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).