Social Media for judges

The authors thank D.C. Superior Court Judge Herbert Dixon, who maintains a two-way street of information sharing with us on this subject.

It was inevitable that, after lawyers flocked to social media, judges would follow. Unsurprisingly, stories of judicial misconduct are beginning to appear. But let us begin with the biggest news story of 2013 involving judges and social media.
ABA Formal Opinion 462
In the most striking recent development, the American Bar Association issued Formal Opinion 462 on February 21, 2013. While it was not groundbreaking, it certainly reaffirmed the general trends among states which have looked the implications of judges using social media.

The fundamental conclusion was: “A judge may participate in electronic social networking, but as with all social relationships and contacts, a judge must comply with relevant provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct and avoid any conduct that would undermine the judge’s independence, integrity, or impartiality, or create an appearance of impropriety.” The opinion notes that it does cover blogging, participation in listserves and messages board and interactive gaming.
Judges need to be mindful that their conduct should promote confidence in the judiciary, which means they need to realize that whatever they post might wind up almost anywhere. And they are urged to avoid establishing social media relations with people or entities where it might be thought that those contacts are in a position to influence the judge.
As the opinion notes, the trickiest part thus far has been determining whether judges may “friend” lawyers – and the states have varying opinions on this. If they do have lawyers who are social media friends, must they disclose that fact? Context is important here – is there truly a significant relationship? Is there anything about the relationship that would suggest any connection to a particular case? The opinion suggests that the affirmative need to disclose, whether the relationship is with an attorney, party or witness, would probably be rare.
If common sense dictates it, a judge may decide to disclose that the judge and a party, a party’s lawyer or a witness have a social media connection, but that the judge believes the connection has not resulted in a relationship requiring disqualification. Obviously, the judge is not compelled to search through all social media relationships for each case to determine whether a relationship might exist.
Truly, the essence of the four-page opinion is simply this: Be mindful of the existing rules regarding judicial ethical conduct and how they might apply to social media. If you had to boil it down to three words, it might be, “Use common sense.” Then again, common sense isn’t all that common, as some judges have proven.
The 2012 CCPIO Report
The Conference of Court Public Information Officers released its third report on New Media’s Impact on the Judiciary on August 2, 2012. According to the findings, 46.1% of judges use social media, with 86.3% of that number using Facebook and 20.6% using LinkedIn.
Elected judges are more likely to use social media though the study does not say why. We assume that social media elevates their public profiles and permits them to solicit contributions, either directly or by publicizing events at which monies are raised.
Asked to react to the statement, “Judges can use social media profile sites, such as Facebook, in their professional lives without compromising professional conduct codes of ethics,” more than 45% still disagree. But the number of judges who agreed with that statement has more than doubled since the 2010 survey, suggesting that judges are beginning to warm to the notion of participating in social media.
In a similar fashion, judges indicated that they were also warming to the use of new technologies in the courtroom. They are also very much aware of how much social media impacts jurors: More than half (60%, up 4.5% from 2010) of judges report routine juror instructions that include some component about digital media use during trial. Now that’s an amazing shift in numbers!
credits;http://www.slaw.ca/2013/05/31/the-perils-of-social-media-for-judges/

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