“Here come de judge!”
Vince A. Sicari is a municipal judge in South Hackensack, N.J. who moonlights as a stand-up comic, and a fairly successful one at that, named Vince August.
He is now sending his lawyer to argue before the New Jersey Supreme Court that he should be allowed to continue his night and weekend job, overturning a 2008 ethics ruling that for a judge to do stand-up creates “an appearance of bias, partiality or impropriety or otherwise negatively affect the dignity of the judiciary,” in violation of the Judicial Conduct Code. The issue is complicated by the fact that municipal judges almost have to moonlight as something—they earn only $13,000 a year. Sicari argues that his comedian gigs generate the bulk of his income, and that the two careers are separate. He says doesn’t make jokes about his cases or lawyers, nor sensitive issues involving race and gender, and on the bench he is as serious as, well, a judge.
Thus, your Ethics Quiz of the Day gives you an opportunity to judge “Judge Shecky”:
Ethics Alarms 