Responding to a report about federal judges ruling on cases involving companies in which they have a financial interest, Chief Justice John Roberts said more training on financial ethical rules needs to occur, Reuters reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported in a September 2021 investigation that 131 judges presided in more than 650 cases in which they or their family members had a financial interest in one of the parties involved, and they did so without notifying ethics officials. Subsequent investigations show there were 950 recusal violations from 2010 to 2018.
One of the cases that needs investigating fell outside that timeframe: Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income his wife received from a Heritage Foundation, and Thomas himself sat on the bench for dozens of cases in which the Heritage Foundation, an affiliate, or a funder was either a direct part or filed amicus briefs. Thomas never recused himself from any of the cases.
In the Chief Justice’s annual report, traditionally issued on the last day of the year, Roberts said the violations were apparently unintentional and likely had no impact on the outcome of the cases. “But for those judges who had multiple violations, or professed ignorance of the ethics rule, there is a more serious problem of inadequate ethics training,” Roberts said in the report.