Seems sensible. It's not like there is any point to 'collecting' as many cases as you can as a judge, and it's better for everyone if focus remains on the case instead of getting pulled into some 'appearance of conflict' (even if there is none).
Kinda? I agree in principle. But not in this instance I think.
The conflict here is very weak, and most judges would not likely recuse in this case or feel shut pressure to do so. The husband worked for a 1000+ attorney firm that once had a client, and had no involvement in anything.
The judge has no knowledge or involvement.
If every judge in a similar situation recused, you would likely have to move/transfer lots of cases around the country to try to find judges that could hear them.
I actually suspect the judge just may not want to deal with this high profile of a case. It can be really a mess to deal with (even before you get to the personal toll of increased death threats, etc)
I suspect this might not have happened on a lower profile case. While in principle the idea here is that the court weighs the facts and the judge makes sure that it happens and ends up with a verdict, the reality is that with enough money it gets changed into some weird sports-gameshow hybrid where irrelevant bits of data are used to weasel out of responsibility.
Perhaps one of the issues here is the (apparent?) amount of personal input a judge can have, so if a judge were to dislike the taste of tomatoes and they have to hear a case on ketchup, they might act differently than a judge that doesn't really care about tomato-taste either way. But since all of this (generally) revolves around humans, removing all wiggle room is problematic as well (since laws are not humans, but are rather static).
We only know the husband worked in a large company that had SBF as a client back in 2021. But chances are he was close to that case. We don't know that. The judge says she doesn't know that either, and we can take her at her word. But she certainly asked him "Do you think there could be a problem?". The husband answers "Maybe", and he does not cross any ethical boundaries about client-attorney confidentiality. Then the judge simply follows the rule "when in doubt, recuse yourself".
> We only know the husband worked in a large company that had SBF as a client back in 2021
He didn't only "work" in the firm; he was a partner in it. Maybe he talked to the partner who managed the SBF work; maybe he didn't. But as a partner he'd have some justification for asking, "Hey, how's that crypto case going?" at least.
Surprisingly in some jurisdictions it does. At least in cases related to criminal defense in Poland the existence of a attorney-client relationship is protected (obviously if it comes to trial, it's eventually revealed, but it's not subpoenable up to that point).
Greg was also a US attorney in the southern district for 12+ years, and special counsel for the US for 2 years in 2017 before he went back to davis again (IE davis->us attorney->davis->us attorney->davis)
That is a more interesting conflict than the Davis-Polk one to me, since he likely worked directly with the office handling the case.
Outside of that, he was at Davis since 1999.
There is simply no sane argument that, essentially anyone his quite-large firm worked for (without him even knowing about it), since 1999 should cause his wife to recuse.
It violates no ethical rules, opinions, cases, or what have you. Judges have stricter ones too, and it doesn't violate or even come close to appearing to violate any of them.
It would be laughed out of appeals.
i've not yet seen any convincing argument here.
As such, i maintain she probably did this because she didn't want the case.
It's not about the conflict being weak, it's mostly about standard setting. If it is the norm that judges recuse themselves even in case of fairly remote conflict of interest, it will make it very difficult for a judge to not recuse himself in the case of a more problematic conflict of interest.
In theory, maybe. I can buy it in places judges are elected or subject to popular anything.
In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense.
It is otherwise a lifetime appointment.
One with a lucrative partner job waiting if they choose to go that route early, regardless of social reputation.
They are fairly insulated from being forced to do something based on the standards others want to set.
> In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense
Conflict of interest is one of the things typically listed as impeachable judicial misconduct; not that there is any concrete boundary to “impeachable offense” since the House is free to decide any conduct is or or is not impeachable.
I think it's a great move in this particular case just because it's so highly watched. A major motivation behind recusal is to maintain confidence in the judicial system. SBF has already been the subject of all sorts of claims of political corruption. Better that this one be squeaky clean, even if sophisticated observers might understand why this sort of connection is innocuous.
Yes, and the ethical bar for the judiciary is supposed to be super strict. It's not even enough to avoid conflicts of interest: one must also avoid the appearance of any potential conflicts of interest.
I think there are prominent examples where they don't. We notice those because they seem unfair. Recusals that do happen probably don't usually make headlines.
Actually, they 100% do not recuse for this level of conflict.
I'm not sure why you believe otherwise, or what data you have to support.
Recusals are extremely rare, and it is common for judges to have SO's or children or .... in law firms that, at some point, represented someone before a judge, without the person having been involved.
Which is the case here.
They do not recuse.
So no, they do not "already do that".
If they did, it really would put a dent in the judge supply - there are not that many federal judges.
I'm quite aware of the judicial bar, and i don't think it even comes close to "appearance of a potential conflict". Which, as a phrase without interpretation, of course, covers literally everything (IE defendant is a vegan and I am not).
So in the end, i simply disagree with you - this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions.
That's not particularly productive: the meaning of the phrase is studied and covered ad nauseam by case law and scholarly (legal & ethical) literature.
Differences in dietary preferences is unlikely to ever be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest, although it's certainly not impossible. There would need to be "reasonable grounds" to think the judge was unable to hear both parties fairly. I know that this sounds a bit wishy-washy, but that's the legal system for you.
As a recovered lawyer (though still licensed in several states), and friends with many judges, i'm again, aware, and have read plenty of it, and been forced to talk about it at parties (unfortunately).
That is precisely why i said " this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions."
What is here would never be considered reasonable grounds. It's not even close.
Outside of random people arguing on hacker news, of course.
This sort of ignores the point - it all depends how you define conflict, which is where any meat of this sort of thing is.
There is no real conflict here.
At all.
By any definition you will find of a conflict, or any advisory opinions, or any caselaw.
That a family member once worked for a firm that, at some point in the past, may have represented a corporation that someone worked for (they aren't even sure), where the family member:
1. did not work on it
2. has no knowledge of it
3. wasn't even aware of this until informed.
is simply not a conflict.
Someone is always going to argue you should recuse.
While recusal is super-rare, recusal motions are not.
Someone will always try to paint a conflict about something!
So your theory on reputation doesn't work in practice - you are going to get smeared either way. That's the fun of being a judge.
Genuinely curious - what is your explanation for why the recusal happened?
Your arguments paint it as clearly unusual or invalid but not knowing you or the details of the case, what is your case for believing you rather than the facts of the case, that a professional judge made this decision? Could you lay out an alternative explanation for why this happened?
i.e. you're making strong claims that this is obviously wrong, yet not explaining why it happened. Barring detailed knowledge, tie usually goes to reality rather than the HN commenter.
It's a huge case being watched by the entire world, even if there is a minuscule chance of it causing an actual issue, or there is the possible bad optics, I fail to see why the judge wouldn't do it. Nobody is going to excuse themselves on these terms for regular cases where the entire world isn't watching, but why risk anything in this case?
The law might be blind -or at least should-, but the audience isn't and that audience might very well include federal agencies and nutjobs.
To disqualify or seek to disqualify (a judge or juror) from participation in the decision in a case, as for personal prejudice against a party or for personal interest in the outcome.
To refuse or reject, as a judge; to challenge that the judge shall not try the cause.
People will still see this as some sort of controversy or cover up, but this is the system working as intended and is a good thing. Small tiny conflicts like this, if not disclosed and dealt with, appear much larger and consequential when discovered down the road.
There has not been a Democratic majority on the court in the last half century, and it is unlikely that there will be one for another half century.
There could have been one a few years ago, but a judicial nomination was held up for over a year, on blatantly partisan grounds. They all know that they were appointed for partisan reasons.
There are some very partisan cases appearing in front of the court and it is worth considering whether they will act in a partisan manner. There is reason why to believe that they have, and will. It should not just be up to the minority party to call for impartiality.
You are of course correct -- the last democrat-nominated majority was during the Kennedy/Johnson era.
The greatest majority lately was 8:1 during Bush Sr.
The last democrat supermajority was during Roosevelt/Truman, when all 9 justices were democrat-nominated.
For anyone who's interested, here's a google doc I created that shows the tenure of the justices with the party of the president that nominated them, starting from the end of Truman. It's been on my to-do list to extend it back to the first justices. Maybe I'll take that as a weekend project.
Thomas largely does not recuse himself. Given his wife’s interests and work, this is troubling. Damn near any case involving Trump or the GOP establishment should have Thomas stepping aside.
The rest of the Justices appear to recuse themselves regularly and properly.
I think at this point it's pretty obvious that Thomas is an angry and bitter man who is for whatever reason hell bent on "owning the libs". If we're stuck with this system of politicizing justices based upon the party that appoints them then at the very least I think term limits are appropriate. 12 years? 15? 20? I see no reason for this justice for life crap.
In Israel, the opposite problem exists - the country leans right and the justices lean left.
In the Israeli "constitution" the legal system is subordinate to the parliament. Practically, the courts have been taking more and more power to themselves, at one point even ruling that the Parliament Speaker (Edelstein) must quit. [His response was to complain about the courts brazen over-reach, but complied - thereby ceding that authority.]
There i now a push-back, as people wonder why "appointed for life" pols should have so much power.
Definitely don’t want to Judge Ito one of the biggest financial crime cases of the decade.
Though, I couldn’t help googling the judge and she’s had some interesting cases lately involving various Trump related things. She had to recuse herself there as well because her husband was in talks with the Mueller investigation. I guess this is more common than I’d think for prominent DC connected families.
Everything about this case has been the system working as intended, and faster than normal.
If the conspiracy theorists had just sat back and relaxed, they would have seen the guy get arrested, extradited, and charged for a crime, which is exactly what was supposed to happen.
Not only that, in the future I'm more likely to assume this judge is acting in good faith in the middle of other "controversies". Recusing oneself as a judge is the ethical thing to do.
It's a bit odd to see the judge jump between referring to herself in both first-person and third-person even in the same sentence. I guess that's normal for this sort of thing?
A distinction is being drawn between two entities: the Court and the judge. The Court makes legal rulings but it is the judge who is recused.
A more traditional formula would be to refer to the judge as "the undersigned", and then there's no mixing first person. The first person references we actually see are rather informal but probably part of the court's preferred style.
I wonder if one could employ a legal strategy to 'taint' as many judges as possible by retaining spouses etc. to get a favorable judge. Brings to mind an episode of The Sopranos where Tony Soprano is advised to consult all the leading divorce lawyers in the area to deny his wife the opportunity to retain them if a divorce were initiated (he ends up doing that and crippling his wife's chances of retaining a good lawyer).
> I wonder if one could employ a legal strategy to 'taint' as many judges as possible by retaining spouses etc. to get a favorable judge.
In practice you'd probably only want to taint the worst ones. In this case the judge he was assigned was supposedly one of the most lenient ones in the district, so this definitely isn't a good thing for him at all.
How is there a widespread differential in sentencing outcomes based on a judge's leniency? When both sides present their recommendations, isn't the judge required to formulate a sentence informed by those recommendations/joint submissions with regard to the mitigating/aggravating factors that are fairly objective?
I've never bought into the idea that a lenient or overly-draconian sentence not informed by standard practice and sentencing principles wouldn't just get struck down or severely modified on appeal
> It has come to the Courts attention that the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, at which my husband is a partner, advised FTX in 2021, as well as represented parties that may be adverse to FTX and Defendant Bankman-Fried in other proceedings (or potential proceedings).
The key to this is simple. 'as well as represented parties that may be adverse'. (Past and as I say below 'future')
The judge doesn't want her husband's firm to be disadvantaged by the connection such that (for lack of a better way to put it) the firm can't further benefit from the money that will flow surrounding this case going forward for any party that is involved. If a partner's wife is the judge hard to believe that wouldn't be a good reason to not pick the firm 'just to be sure'.
> It has come to the Courts attention that the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, at which my husband is a partner, advised FTX in 2021, as well as represented parties that may be adverse to FTX and Defendant Bankman-Fried in other proceedings (or potential proceedings).
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP have clients that lost money in the FTX mess. Seems a very reasonable recusal and a major conflict of interest (not at all a minor connection as some are suggesting).
Anyway - its a shitty case to preside over, it will either be over in a few days/weeks or get pointlessly dragged out.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadThe conflict here is very weak, and most judges would not likely recuse in this case or feel shut pressure to do so. The husband worked for a 1000+ attorney firm that once had a client, and had no involvement in anything. The judge has no knowledge or involvement.
If every judge in a similar situation recused, you would likely have to move/transfer lots of cases around the country to try to find judges that could hear them.
I actually suspect the judge just may not want to deal with this high profile of a case. It can be really a mess to deal with (even before you get to the personal toll of increased death threats, etc)
Perhaps one of the issues here is the (apparent?) amount of personal input a judge can have, so if a judge were to dislike the taste of tomatoes and they have to hear a case on ketchup, they might act differently than a judge that doesn't really care about tomato-taste either way. But since all of this (generally) revolves around humans, removing all wiggle room is problematic as well (since laws are not humans, but are rather static).
And what's the point of putting in months of work hearing a case if there's a chance that it will all get nullified.
Not recusing oneself though…
He didn't only "work" in the firm; he was a partner in it. Maybe he talked to the partner who managed the SBF work; maybe he didn't. But as a partner he'd have some justification for asking, "Hey, how's that crypto case going?" at least.
"Your Honor, the Prosecution suggests this is not that big a thing!"
No. Don't want to go there.
Nope. “My husband has had no involvement in any of these representations.”
That is a more interesting conflict than the Davis-Polk one to me, since he likely worked directly with the office handling the case.
Outside of that, he was at Davis since 1999.
There is simply no sane argument that, essentially anyone his quite-large firm worked for (without him even knowing about it), since 1999 should cause his wife to recuse.
It violates no ethical rules, opinions, cases, or what have you. Judges have stricter ones too, and it doesn't violate or even come close to appearing to violate any of them.
It would be laughed out of appeals.
i've not yet seen any convincing argument here.
As such, i maintain she probably did this because she didn't want the case.
I was going to agree with this but then I realized and made this comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34120906
Essentially I feel this is about business for the firm going forward, not anything that happened in the past.
In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense. It is otherwise a lifetime appointment.
One with a lucrative partner job waiting if they choose to go that route early, regardless of social reputation.
They are fairly insulated from being forced to do something based on the standards others want to set.
Conflict of interest is one of the things typically listed as impeachable judicial misconduct; not that there is any concrete boundary to “impeachable offense” since the House is free to decide any conduct is or or is not impeachable.
Yes, and the ethical bar for the judiciary is supposed to be super strict. It's not even enough to avoid conflicts of interest: one must also avoid the appearance of any potential conflicts of interest.
Recusals are extremely rare, and it is common for judges to have SO's or children or .... in law firms that, at some point, represented someone before a judge, without the person having been involved. Which is the case here.
They do not recuse. So no, they do not "already do that". If they did, it really would put a dent in the judge supply - there are not that many federal judges.
So in the end, i simply disagree with you - this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions.
That's not particularly productive: the meaning of the phrase is studied and covered ad nauseam by case law and scholarly (legal & ethical) literature.
Differences in dietary preferences is unlikely to ever be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest, although it's certainly not impossible. There would need to be "reasonable grounds" to think the judge was unable to hear both parties fairly. I know that this sounds a bit wishy-washy, but that's the legal system for you.
That is precisely why i said " this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions."
What is here would never be considered reasonable grounds. It's not even close.
Outside of random people arguing on hacker news, of course.
Other judges are avaliable. Reputation and integrity, once lost, cannot be recovered
There is no real conflict here. At all. By any definition you will find of a conflict, or any advisory opinions, or any caselaw.
That a family member once worked for a firm that, at some point in the past, may have represented a corporation that someone worked for (they aren't even sure), where the family member:
1. did not work on it
2. has no knowledge of it
3. wasn't even aware of this until informed.
is simply not a conflict.
Someone is always going to argue you should recuse.
While recusal is super-rare, recusal motions are not.
Someone will always try to paint a conflict about something!
So your theory on reputation doesn't work in practice - you are going to get smeared either way. That's the fun of being a judge.
Your arguments paint it as clearly unusual or invalid but not knowing you or the details of the case, what is your case for believing you rather than the facts of the case, that a professional judge made this decision? Could you lay out an alternative explanation for why this happened?
i.e. you're making strong claims that this is obviously wrong, yet not explaining why it happened. Barring detailed knowledge, tie usually goes to reality rather than the HN commenter.
The law might be blind -or at least should-, but the audience isn't and that audience might very well include federal agencies and nutjobs.
recuse rĭ-kyoo͞z′ transitive verb
Justice mixed with partisanship is incredibly dangerous to democracy.
There could have been one a few years ago, but a judicial nomination was held up for over a year, on blatantly partisan grounds. They all know that they were appointed for partisan reasons.
There are some very partisan cases appearing in front of the court and it is worth considering whether they will act in a partisan manner. There is reason why to believe that they have, and will. It should not just be up to the minority party to call for impartiality.
The greatest majority lately was 8:1 during Bush Sr.
The last democrat supermajority was during Roosevelt/Truman, when all 9 justices were democrat-nominated.
For anyone who's interested, here's a google doc I created that shows the tenure of the justices with the party of the president that nominated them, starting from the end of Truman. It's been on my to-do list to extend it back to the first justices. Maybe I'll take that as a weekend project.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TKXH_wb29XumUAEXPGCn...
The rest of the Justices appear to recuse themselves regularly and properly.
In the Israeli "constitution" the legal system is subordinate to the parliament. Practically, the courts have been taking more and more power to themselves, at one point even ruling that the Parliament Speaker (Edelstein) must quit. [His response was to complain about the courts brazen over-reach, but complied - thereby ceding that authority.]
There i now a push-back, as people wonder why "appointed for life" pols should have so much power.
Though, I couldn’t help googling the judge and she’s had some interesting cases lately involving various Trump related things. She had to recuse herself there as well because her husband was in talks with the Mueller investigation. I guess this is more common than I’d think for prominent DC connected families.
If the conspiracy theorists had just sat back and relaxed, they would have seen the guy get arrested, extradited, and charged for a crime, which is exactly what was supposed to happen.
Funnily enough the conspiracy theorists, who know exactly how it all works, said it would never happen.
A more traditional formula would be to refer to the judge as "the undersigned", and then there's no mixing first person. The first person references we actually see are rather informal but probably part of the court's preferred style.
In practice you'd probably only want to taint the worst ones. In this case the judge he was assigned was supposedly one of the most lenient ones in the district, so this definitely isn't a good thing for him at all.
I've never bought into the idea that a lenient or overly-draconian sentence not informed by standard practice and sentencing principles wouldn't just get struck down or severely modified on appeal
The key to this is simple. 'as well as represented parties that may be adverse'. (Past and as I say below 'future')
The judge doesn't want her husband's firm to be disadvantaged by the connection such that (for lack of a better way to put it) the firm can't further benefit from the money that will flow surrounding this case going forward for any party that is involved. If a partner's wife is the judge hard to believe that wouldn't be a good reason to not pick the firm 'just to be sure'.
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP have clients that lost money in the FTX mess. Seems a very reasonable recusal and a major conflict of interest (not at all a minor connection as some are suggesting).
Anyway - its a shitty case to preside over, it will either be over in a few days/weeks or get pointlessly dragged out.