Archives for 2016

8/10/2016 Press Release: California Judicial Watchdog Faces First Audit in 56 Years (PDF) For Immediate Release: August 10, 2016 Media Contacts: Kathleen Russell Joseph Sweeney  California Lawmakers Order First Audit of State’s Judicial Oversight Agency in 56 Years Request to Audit the Commission on Judicial Performance Was Passed at Today’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee … [Read more...]

Who judges the judges at your local courthouse? There is a state commission for that, and it is about to have the first audit in its 55-year history. The Commission on Judicial Performance will go through that audit at the request of lawmakers after concerns were raised about little or no transparency, and that less than 2 percent of complaints against judges result in discipline. [Read Full … [Read more...]

SACRAMENTO — Four state lawmakers have called for an audit of the Commission on Judicial Performance, the judge-disciplining agency that has become a lightning rod for bench officers who complain it's overzealous and litigants who say it protects bad jurists. [Read Full Article] Lawmakers Want Audit of Judicial Discipline Commission | The Recorder (PDF) … [Read more...]

Like James Stewart in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” Robert Amstadt watched the atrocity from his Milwaukee apartment in horror. It was “the most evil thing I’ve ever seen,” he later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Amstadt had heard the telltale signs of a domestic disturbance — voices rising in heated, passionate argument — around 8:45 p.m. Saturday night. It was like any … [Read more...]

It’s been painfully evident for years, if not decades, that the State Bar – the quasi-public organization that licenses lawyers and is supposed regulate their conduct – is an institutional disaster zone. Multiple reports by outside auditors about its managerial shortcomings, regulatory backlogs and financial irregularities, very public exchanges of charges and countercharges by State Bar … [Read more...]