While we understand that conflicts of interest are a serious matter in the judicial realm, a recent ban on friending between judges and lawyers on social networking sites does seem a bit extreme. The ruling, from the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee arm of the Florida Supreme Court, would prevent judges from adding lawyers who may appear before the judge as “friends” and vice versa on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, et al.
The reasoning behind the ban is to prevent the appearance to the public that friended lawyers might wield some sort of undue influence over the judge. Because the judge’s friends list is most likely available to the public (even more true with Facebook’s recent privacy changes), the committee found that friending a lawyer would violate Canon 2B of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which states, “A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”
Digging down deeper into the proclamation, there’s an interesting loophole: Lawyers are still allowed to be a “fan” of judges on FacebookFacebook
. The committee says that’s because the judge doesn’t have to explicitly approve the lawyer as a fan, nor do they have the power to reject them. It’s that act of direct approval that seems to bother the committee, which makes us wonder how these rules will apply to TwitterTwitter
where lawyers can “follow” judges in the same manner without requiring approval. The proclamation focuses primarily on Facebook and doesn’t mention Twitter by name, but according to the logic of the argument it wouldn’t be too surprising if judges were expected to block lawyers who followed them.
We know that this ruling is in the interest of thwarting corruption, special interests and
backroom dealings in the courts, but honestly, is disallowing Facebook friending really going to have any impact? What do you think?
