U.S. Judges Getting Disclosure Data Deleted

• Conflict of interest financial information erased

Nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges. The committee decided that the information removed might tend to endanger a particular judge or put his or her financial investments at risk, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. In 55 instances, the committee withheld all information on the disclosure reports -- including details about outside income, gifts, business contracts, debts, stocks and the value of holdings. The study examined disclosure reports filed under the Ethics in Government Act from 1999 through 2002. Specialists in judicial ethics said they were startled at the breadth of the excisions -- and particularly that the material cut included financial information that appeared to present little safety risk. Jeffrey Shaman, a legal ethicist at DePaul University, said  "The purpose of financial disclosure is to ensure the judge doesn't have a financial conflict of interest. . . . It makes one wonder if the real reason for a judge to request the redaction is to prevent the public from learning embarrassing information." The GAO report did not identify the judges who sought deletions. [more]