• Disciplinary processes against judges

    From Nicholas Collin Paul de =?UTF-8?Q?Glouce=C5=BFter?=@thanks-to@Taf.com to uk.legal.moderated on Wed Jun 10 12:19:41 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.legal.moderated

    "INFORMAL RESPONSES TO JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT:
    ASSESSING CHAPTER 4 OF THE JUDICIAL COUNCIL ACT
    [. . .]
    Author: Patrick OrCOBrien, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Oxford
    Brookes University1
    [. . .]
    [2022] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 6(1)
    [. . .]
    [. . .] It seems likely that (as is the case in England and Wales) a
    certain threshold of alleged misconduct must be reached for the formal
    route to be justified, and that a relatively high threshold may be
    applied at the initial stage of screening for admissibility. As a
    consequence, however, low level misconduct is likely to be addressed
    through informal social pressures completely outside of the statutory framework. These responses will not leave any mark on the public
    record, creating a potentially misleading impression about the
    accountability of the judiciary. [. . .]"
    says HTTPS://JudicialStudiesJournal.Ie/assets/uploads/documents/6.%20Patrick%20O'Brien%20final.pdf

    That paper presents statistics from various places. Attempting to copy
    and paste entire tables to the USENET would lose formatting, so
    instead I show smaller excerpts.

    Table 1: Complaints statistics for England and Wales
    shows inter alia:
    "Year
    2019-20"
    "Total complaints
    1183"
    "Upheld (%)
    4%".
    (It reports 3% or 2% for a different year.)

    Table 4: Judicial Complaints Statistics for Scotland
    shows:
    "Year [. . .] 2019-20"
    "Total complaints [. . .] 68"
    "Upheld (%) [. . .] 0".
    (It reports 4% or 2% or 1% or 0% for a different year.)

    Table 5: Judicial Complaints statistics for Northern Ireland
    shows:
    "Year
    2019"
    "Total complaints
    59"
    "Upheld/in part as %
    0".
    (It reports 2% or 0% for a different year.)

    Table 3: Judicial Complaints statistics for the United States
    shows:
    "Year [. . .] 2019"
    "Total active[. . .] 2636"
    "Remedial action (%) [. . .] 0.002%".
    (It reports 0.0004% or 0.001% for a different year.)

    That paper warns that those situations in different places are not
    completely equal, but you have to compare using available data.

    Such available data show to me that the United States of America have
    circa the same number of reported complaints against a judge in 1 year
    as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
    does. However sources like
    HTTPS://WWW.Britannica.com/place/United-States
    and
    HTTPS://WWW.Britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom
    indicate that the ratios of the populations of the U.S.A. is to the
    U.K. could be like 5.

    (I happen to quote above a low year of "Total complaints" from Table
    1. The values for "Total active" in Table 3 do not vary so much.)

    That paper warns that statistics which it reports misleadingly make
    judges seem to be less bad than that researcher believes judges to
    be. Even that researcher understimates how evil judges are.


    An episode of "Court Cam" showed a video recording of a judge
    assaulting a party. Video accountability of course being a concept
    which judges in Europe are afraid of, this video is from the country
    of the United States of America as opposed to the U.K.

    Courts in Northern Ireland say that you are not even allowed to bring
    a pencil into a court without a permission! (One court in Germany is
    similar.)

    This episode of "Court Cam" says that this video is viral on the
    Internet so I searched therefor. I fail to find as good a copy as
    "Court Cam" shows - maybe you can perform better searches. I do
    archive versions and a judgment against this judge in HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/gardai/Where_are_you_from/reprimand_against_Judge_Cary_Hays/
    (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Nicholas Collin Paul de =?UTF-8?Q?Glouce=C5=BFter?=@thanks-to@Taf.com to uk.legal.moderated on Wed Jun 10 14:43:19 2026
    From Newsgroup: uk.legal.moderated

    "JUDGES IN REGULATORY SPACE: TOWARDS RESPONSIVE REGULATION OF JUDICIAL
    CONDUCT
    [. . .]
    Author: Colin Scott [. . .]
    [. . .]
    [2022] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 6(1)
    [. . .]
    regulation contrasts with the ethos we tend to associate with the
    common law.5"
    says HTTPS://JudicialStudiesJournal.Ie/assets/uploads/documents/7.%20Colin%20Scott%20Final.pdf


    "JUDGES IN REGULATORY SPACE: TOWARDS RESPONSIVE REGULATION OF JUDICIAL
    CONDUCT
    [. . .]
    Author: Colin Scott [. . .]
    [. . .]
    [2022] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 6(1)
    [. . .]
    Other non-mandated informal roles are played by the media, including
    press broadcasters and social media, in highlighting both individual
    instances of alleged misconduct, but also the wider machinery for
    addressing misconduct. Similarly, academics may deploy their capacity
    for research, education and wider public engagement to better
    understand and address issues of judicial misconduct.

    [. . .]

    [. . .] the potential for media attention are also likely to be
    factors inducing compliance."
    says HTTPS://JudicialStudiesJournal.Ie/assets/uploads/documents/7.%20Colin%20Scott%20Final.pdf

    They are not as good as Court TV and "Court Cam" and so on.

    (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

    --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2