U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia had a habit of having noisy sex with a police commander in her chambers during office hours. This resulted in a “chambers workplace that was extremely uncomfortable and troubling for clerks,” a judicial panel concluded.
Gee, ya think?
Ross was nominated to the bench in the Northern District of Georgia in 2014 by President Obama. Of course she was. She’s a Democrat, she’s black, she’s arrogant, and she’s unqualified to be a judge. A special committee released damning findings of misconduct in a report two weeks ago. Ross was found to have lied about having sexual intercourse in her chambers—judges aren’t supposed to lie either—but inexplicably, the Eleventh Circuit and Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability decided sufficient punishment was to bar Ross from serving as a chief judge and require her to write apology letters to her clerks. Other than that, she only received a private reprimand. The disciplinary report signaled a whitewash by stating, “Although the special committee is deeply troubled by the conduct in which the judge engaged, the subject judge has demonstrated a strong propensity for rehabilitation and continued diligent service to the judiciary.” She lied to investigators! She was screwing around during work hours. That’s “diligent service to the judiciary”?
The lack of serious sanctions is indefensible. Ross shattered the following Canons in the Federal Judicial Code of Ethics:
Ethics Alarms 
Is there a secret Fani Willis Society the general public is unaware of?
I almost included a Fani reference but decided to leave it to you…
Wait. Did she fire her staff?
jvb
For ratting her out? No. But I wouldn’t put it past her.
It sure is a good thing Democrats don’t shatter norms.
This adds a new meaning to the legal term “noisy withdrawal.”
The overall issue of dealing with incompetent judges is a massive train wreck. This is true at both the state level and the federal level. There is a compelling reason for the absolute autonomy judges have. We can’t exactly have people suing judges. Incompetence and misconduct should be addressed by the judiciary themselves, along with the impeachment route. But they’re not.
Why are they not? Because nether party will ever impeach a judge again. In this case, zero democrats would ever vote to remove this judge because it means creating an opening for Trump to appoint a new judge. But that’s just this specific example, the republicans will do the same if the party was reversed. Want a glaring counter example? Justice Thomas. He should be removed. But he won’t be. Even I don’t want him removed, because he’s the most solid originalist we have. I’d argue he’s the most solid Justice that represents: just follow the damn constitution.
I get the political side that’s making impeachment impossible. Judges have been politicized at a level that makes punishment impossible. I think the blame lies with two politicians in particular. I demonize FDR and Edward Kennedy more than any other.
FDR radically changed the federal government, moving it to a far more powerful and more socialist government than ever before. Rather than do the constitutional amendments that should have happened to radically change as he desired, he packed the supreme court to re-interpret the constitution in the way he desired. We start with United States v. Miller that redefined the 2nd amendment to say what it never said. That echos today with the 12 states hell bent on civilian disarmament and a feckless supreme court who won’t address rouge appellate courts who find nothing wrong with what they’re doing. We have Helvering v. Davis that redefined the power of congress, deciding it was no longer bound by article I section 8 of the constitution. Then it culminated in the pinnacle case of Wickard v. Filburn, finding no limit to federal power whatsoever.
Given all of the above about FDR, why does Sen Kennedy deserve an equal place in this? Robert Bork. Kennedy is the cause of the phrase “Borking”. Bork was one of the most qualified judges for the supreme court we’ve ever seen. The contrast between Bork and Anthony Kennedy was rather stark. I’d argue the only redeeming quality of Justice Kennedy was retiring in a manner that allowed him to be replaced with a arguably better Kavanaugh. The legacy of Sen Kennedy’s action was the end of the practice of letting presidents pick judges and the Senate only rejecting inferior candidates. The end game of this politics is both the inability of congress to address the bad judges combined with the tendency to pick candidate solely for their political ideology. Justice Jackson is the culmination of the latter part. Competency is no longer important when the overriding factor is political ideology, along with token qualities to check off DEI requirements for the left when it comes to democrat nominees.
What’s not stated is that she also probably ‘earns’ a six figure salary from the state, or whatever governmental body she is employed by.
She’s a federal judge so $249,900 per year. Plus full benefits until death, and full pay until death. Oh, and no social security taxes so that’s another $10K a year she doesn’t pay.