New Rules for Judges

After Abe Fortas' scandal-clouded resignation from the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren, members of Congress and other critics called for a tightening of judicial ethics in order to eliminate ambiguities surrounding a judge's conduct of office. Last week a 14-man special committee of the American Bar Association completed a three-year study of the A.B.A.'s half-century-old code of ethics.

"We've avoided trying to write a new edition of the Ten Commandments or an annotated edition of the seven deadly sins," says former California Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Traynor, head of the A.B.A. committee. "We don't have as many rhetorical, hortatory, pious expressions as they had in the old canons. We've tried to meet head-on the crucial issues."

The committee's recommendations: OUTSIDE INCOME. The committee proposed that a judge be forbidden to serve as a director, adviser or employee of any private business. He could manage his own investments, but only in a way that would "minimize the number of cases in which he might have to disqualify himself." He may not act as an executor, or in any other capacity, for the estate of anyone except a member of his immediate family. If he has time, a judge may engage in certain nonjudicial activities that do not give even "the appearance of impropriety," but he must publicly reveal the amount of money he is paid--and who paid it. That proviso would cover the $20,000 fee paid to Fortas by the Wolfson Foundation, which led to his resignation after the arrangement was revealed by LIFE.

POLITICS. The revised code continues to recommend that a judge's political activity be strictly limited to his own reelection. It would also bar any judge from serving on a governmental committee or commission, except one that is concerned with the improvement of justice. This provision apparently was inspired by the controversy over Warren's service on the commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination.

LAW. All full-time judges would be barred from any private practice of law. A part-time judge could continue to make ends meet by carrying on a limited practice, but he may not work on any case being heard by another judge on the court in which he serves.

The new code is expected to be endorsed by the A.B.A. this summer, after which federal and state authorities will consider it. The existing A.B.A. code was adopted by most states, but not by the federal judiciary. The chances may be better this time, since Chief Justice Warren Burger, like Warren before him, has declared his interest in strengthening federal judicial ethics.

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