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Another State Opines on Judges and Facebook

By Robert J. Ambrogi

Last week, Legal Profession Blog reported on a Nov. 17 opinion of the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee concluding that judges may not "friend" lawyers who may appear before them on social networking sites such as Facebook. Now, Legal Profession Blog finds another ethics opinion on judges' use of Facebook, this one from South Carolina. The South Carolina opinion, issued in October, concerns a narrower issue than did the one from Florida. It addressed friending by judges, but not of lawyers who may appear before the judges. Instead, it addressed the question of whether a judge may friend law enforcement officers and employees who work in the judge's office. The South Carolina Advisory Committee on Standards of Judicial Conduct concluded that a judge may be a member of Facebook and may friend law enforcement officers and employees as long as they do not discuss anything related to the judge's official position. "Complete separation of a judge from extra-judicial activities is neither possible nor wise; a judge should not become isolated from the community in which the judge lives," the opinion said. "Allowing a Magistrate to be a member of a social networking site allows the community to see how the...

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