The Wall Street Journal has chronicled the federal judiciary’s financial disclosure forms and has highlighted instances where judges may have been trading stocks at the same time they were hearing cases on companies whose stock they may have purchased or sold. The Hon. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin (ret.) authored some of the most influential eDiscovery opinions in the years before she stepped down from the bench. She serves as counsel to Stroock with a practice including arbitration and mediation.
Judge Scheindlin has some advice for sitting judges that she shared with Law360.
In “Mutual Funds Could Salve Fed. Judiciary’s Conflict Headaches” on Law360, Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin advises federal judges to put their money into mutual or index funds, rather than individual stocks, to promote confidence that courts are impartial when deciding on financial cases.
From the perspective of the appearance of impropriety, judges need to be more careful, and a simple solution is using mutual funds and avoiding trading individual stocks. I just don’t know why more judges don’t do that.”
The Hon. Judge Shira Scheindlin (ret.)
