Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

All hail the time of the bunny!

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

“They all knew.”

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

You are here: Home / Supreme Court / Free Law Project Creates the First Online Database of Federal Judicial Financial Disclosures

Free Law Project Creates the First Online Database of Federal Judicial Financial Disclosures

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Here’s some good news for a change.  Really happy to see this!

Okay, not the part about the  13  131 (!) federal judges who broke the law by ruling in cases where they had a conflict of interest.

Free Law Project Creates the First Online Database of Federal Judicial Financial Disclosures

What is the financial disclosure database?

Our financial disclosure database is a collection of over 250,000 pages of financial records drawn from over 26,000 tiff and PDF files. We requested these files from the federal judiciary beginning in 2017 and have been gathering them since that time.

These files contain the disclosure records for every federal judge, justice, and magistrate from 2011 to 2018. We expect to receive and process the majority of the 2019 disclosures in the coming weeks.

We were also able to gather files from other online sources, providing us with some disclosures from 2003 to 2010. With these in our database, we believe we have every publicly-available financial disclosure form, but that there may be significant private collections in newsrooms and elsewhere. If you have such a collection that you would be willing to share, please let us know.

Why is this important?

First, while the type of documents included in our database are technically available to the public, there are many caveats to that availability. For example, before 2017, financial disclosure records had to be individually requested by fax, and a fee had to be paid for each disclosure. This created an insurmountable barrier to their bulk access.

Second, by statute, financial disclosure records are only available for six years. After that time, disclosures generally must be destroyed by the Judiciary, rendering older disclosures entirely inaccessible.

The knowledge of the six-year lifespan of these documents, and the removal of the per-disclosure fee in 2017, led us to begin requesting these documents in bulk on a regular basis. At the very least, we figured, if we had these disclosures, they would not wind up in the trash.

But having the disclosures is only half the battle. The last reason a database like this has never existed is a simple one: time and money. Despite our expertise in this area, the extraction of data from these documents required nearly a year of work to complete. Some of this work was supported by a partner of ours, Pre/Dicta, which generously supported work on this project, but much of it still had to be supported out of our own funds.

We are very excited to announce that this database will soon be publicly available on https://www.courtlistener.com and we will be providing free API access to all the records and files held within.

h/t Steeplejack

If there’s any more good news today, share it in the comments!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  4. 4.

    Almost Retired

    This really is wonderful news, and I will now make checking this database a routine part of every federal court case I handle in the future (which is I hope is none, because I want to retire).  But still a great thing! Also, depending on what’s in the database, there may be some entertainment value here — a little light research on whether federal judges are as inept at investment as medical doctors.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    I had to run out the door to the vet just as I was posting this, so I didn’t have a chance to say that since these judges seem to understand ethics, maybe they will do the right thing to prevent shame and embarrassment. Oh wait, these are republican judges, they have no shame.

  6. 6.

    Just Chuck

    Tweet says 131 judges, not 13.  My prediction is that all 131 of those judges will 100% get away with all of it.  Like any banana republic, corruption is the established norm now.

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    @DonnaK: I expect that Supreme  Court Justices have  generous enough pensions that a requirement to convert any holdings beyond two houses into U.S. Treasury notes would not be onerous. As long as Justices are allowed other investments, recusals would warranted in many cases. There might be so many recusals that we would need 15 Justices!

  8. 8.

    Kay

    COLUMBIA, S.C. — A federal judge Tuesday suspended South Carolina from enforcing a rule that banned school districts from requiring masks for students.
    Parents of disabled children, helped by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the state saying the ban discriminated against medically vulnerable students by keeping them out of public schools as the Covid-19 pandemic continues.
    The mask ban has been forcefully backed by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and GOP lawmakers who said parents should decide whether students wear masks, not school officials.
    “It is noncontroversial that children need to go to school. And, they are entitled to any reasonable accommodation that allows them to do so. No one can reasonably argue that it is an undue burden to wear a mask to accommodate a child with disabilities,” Lewis wrote.
    Lewis compared the General Assembly preventing mask requirements to telling schools they can no longer install wheelchair ramps.

    I thought the disability argument was really strong and would be accepted by any non-Trumpy or far Right judge. Children with disabilities have very good advocates and they have been fighting for 50 years for these protections- they weren’t going to allow Donald Trump or his followers to gut them.

  10. 10.

    Old School

    Since I don’t have a WSJ subscription, I can’t read the article.  If 131 judges broke the law, what would be their potential punishment?  Is it jail time? A fine?

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @Almost Retired:

    Re: the comment below predicting that the 131 judges will get away with their corruption do you happen to know if there are any consequences to judges to break the law like that?

  13. 13.

    Kay

    The ruling wasn’t even a close call, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis wrote, stopping the state from enforcing a one-year ban placed in the budget.

    Apparently doesn’t know she’s required to suspend all thinking and entertain any fucking loony theory or opinion and treat everything the same. A clear violation of the idiotic “both sides rule”.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: Fight for 15!!

    SCOTUS justices often “teach” at local law schools.  A former colleague was able to go on a junket educational seminar taught by Gorsuch in Padua, Italy. Roughly $5k+ per person (including travel expenses).

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    hells littlest angel

    @Old School:If 131 judges broke the law, what would be their potential punishment?  Is it jail time? A fine?

    Would you believe a stern talking to?

    However, my understanding is that their rulings in the cases are expected to be tossed.

  16. 16.

    Almost Retired

    @WaterGirl:  I’m not sure what will happen to the 131 Judges in violation of the financial disclosure rules.

    Obviously, they will have to recuse themselves from the case(s), which will throw those cases into total disarray.  But beyond that, I think it’s usually just an ethics admonishment and a mark on their permanent record.  That may not be the case for more systematic corruption, but I haven’t done the research.

    I know that a notorious federal judge in Los Angeles, Manuel Real, was never seriously disciplined for a vast array of offenses, although I don’t recall if any of them were financial.  The local legal community had to just wait for him to die to be rid of him (and he took his sweet time in doing so).

  17. 17.

    Malovich

    This is simply amazing as a tool.

    I’d like to think of it as a type of ‘Digital Justice’.

    I’ll show myself out.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    To help publicize this, there should be a TV show where things like this are investigated and there are actual consequences for the judges.

    Maybe that would help create an expectation of consequences in the general public.

    Hey, if Will and Grace helped move gay rights forward, maybe this could help.

  19. 19.

    Cacti

    The fact that we have rules of judicial conduct that bind all of the inferior courts but not SCOTUS is exactly ass backwards, and how we end up with Amy Covid-Barrett hearing cases for Shell Oil, where her dad was corporate counsel for 30 years.

    Or Clarence Thomas hearing Bush v. Gore, while his wife was a paid employee of the Bush campaign.

  22. 22.

    Old School

    Do the recusal requirements have thresholds?

    If a judge owns 100 shares of General Electric, does that trigger a recusal?  Is it 1,000?  100,000 shares?

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    @Old School: High positions like that (federal judge, House and Senate seats, high positions in the executive branch, etc.) should require all investments to be in broad (e.g. S&P500 or more) mutual funds and/or blind trusts.  Individual stock holdings and the like should be forbidden.  There are clear conflicts of interest when rulings on cases directly affect individual companies.

    This isn’t hard.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    OT..  Just got my pfizer booster shot, and came home and twitter is afire.   Matthew Dowd is running for Lt. Gov of Texas and Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski are screwing around.   I assume Noem is just padding her resume, because affairs are in.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Malovich: I would like to see a databise integrating Federal Election Commission reporting. I’ve seen interesting work by researchers like @LizBurgh that are the product of individual research into FEC reports. But that is labor intensive work, and her focus is limited to a relatively few campaigns and PACs. An integrated database of FEC reports would be a vastly greater task than the one for judges, but it could be very illuminating.

  26. 26.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    Good. I heard all sorts of those callous, looney, selfish arguments against a mask mandate at my local school district board meeting. Thankfully, the board voted to keep the mask mandate in place. I mentioned here before that I wanted to speak publicly, but I ended up not doing so because my name and address would’ve been public info. So, I’m opting for a supportive email to the board instead

  29. 29.

    Old School

    @Another Scott: I understand that mutual funds would be a better option.  However, that isn’t currently the case.  There were 685 cases in the article where the judge should have recused themselves, I’m wondering if anyone here knew what amount should require a recusal.

  30. 30.

    taumaturgo

    This blatant corrupt action by the judiciary should lead to a common cause by both parties to begin to chip away at the corrosive influence of greed and money, but Congress has a huge insider trading problem.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: 500 days late and a few hundred thousand dead bodies  short.

    But going with the notion that the best time to plant an oak tree was 50 years ago, then second best time to plant the oak tree is today…

    I will count this as great news, however belated.

    Hey YouTube, now do The Big Lie.

  33. 33.

    Another Scott

    As I expected, an agreement on the BIF and Reconciliation won’t come until the last minute. Pelosi is indicating that the BIF vote may not come Thursday unless S&M get with the program. TheHill:

    An initial Monday vote on infrastructure was already kicked to Thursday when it became clear that there was no House-Senate agreement on the larger social benefits bill, which liberals are demanding before they’ll support the infrastructure proposal. Without those assurances, it appears the liberals have the numbers to kill it.

    Pelosi said Wednesday that she won’t move one bill without the other.

    “We’re doing it simultaneously,” she said.

    And upping the stakes in the ongoing debate, she declared that a simple promise from the Senate centrists to support the larger “family” package won’t be enough to spur the House to act. Instead, she wants legislative text to be drafted on that broader piece of Biden’s agenda.

    “We come to a place where we have agreement in legislative language — not just principle, in legislative language — that the president supports,” she said. “It has to be his standard.”

    IOW, S&M stalling the Senate for 4+ months has reduced the already low trust from progressive Democrats in the House. The Senate has to move first to get their, and Nancy’s, votes. It’s good she’s holding their ground now. We’ll see what happens…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    Barbara

    I used to work for a federal judge and I think that as in most situations, the good ones will welcome the daylight, and the malefactors will try to bury their dislike in platitudes about judicial independence and scaring off talented people. In between will be the usual cohort of those in complete denial about the role individual judges play in maintaining the reputation of the third branch of government. The latter two categories can resign tomorrow, but they won’t because a lifetime appointment to a powerful position is one of the best gigs in the universe. No one should listen to their grumbling. They exist for us, not vice versa.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    @Old School: The rules are (naturally) broad:

    Cornell.edu – 28 US Code 455:

    (a)Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

    (b)He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

    […]

    (4)He knows that he, individually or as a fiduciary, or his spouse or minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;

    […]

    (4)“financial interest” means ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small, or a relationship as director, adviser, or other active participant in the affairs of a party, except that:

    (i)Ownership in a mutual or common investment fund that holds securities is not a “financial interest” in such securities unless the judge participates in the management of the fund;

    (ii)An office in an educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization is not a “financial interest” in securities held by the organization;

    (iii)The proprietary interest of a policyholder in a mutual insurance company, of a depositor in a mutual savings association, or a similar proprietary interest, is a “financial interest” in the organization only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the interest;

    (iv)Ownership of government securities is a “financial interest” in the issuer only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the securities.

    The rules are clear. Any non-mutual-fund-like holding counts.

    IANAL.

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Argiope

    Let’s see, good news: sitting at a COVID testing center on a college campus where my one and only spawn is moving in today.  It’s a milestone.  Bittersweet but this is what we aim for, right? Getting them out of our houses and into a bigger world?

  38. 38.

    Barbara

    @taumaturgo: All insider trading is a problem, but federal judges can act individually to harm the interests of others in ways no one else can, and they are virtually unchecked.

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @JPL: And after questions by concerned citizens and state legislators, South Dakota Attorney General Jason “Manslaughter” Ravnsborg has announced a review of Noem’s meeting with state real estate licensing officials who had denied her daughter an appraiser certification.  Ravnsborg is authorized to give legal opinions to the legisature.

    South Dakota is seen as a very red state, and it is now in federal elections. But Noem won election in 2018 by less than 12,000 votes out of 339,000 votes cast. Her reelection next year is no certainty.

  43. 43.

    taumaturgo

    This blatant corrupt action by the judiciary should lead to a common cause by both parties to begin to chip away at the corrosive influence of greed and money, but Congress has a huge insider trading problem.

    @Barbara:  Correct, but IMO when it comes to corruption, we all should be purists and demand zero tolerance. Corruption is insidious, like mold, it grows undetected until it inflicts harm.

  46. 46.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Another Scott:

    If Clarence Thomas were an average state court judge, he’d have to recuse on most cases before him based on his wife’s position on activist networks that propel issues to the court.

  47. 47.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    There are problems when it comes to closely held companies.  Donald Trump is actually an excellent example.  There’s really no way for him to get rid of his conflicts of interest other than selling all his business interests because the main value to those companies is the Trump name.  Of course that makes the business much less valuable if it’s sold.  I’m willing to accept that people in Trump’s position shouldn’t be allowed to go into public service without taking a big financial hit, but we need to be aware of what we’re asking.

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore: Carter had to give up control of his businesses.  And FTFNYT hounded him for years about how he did it, Billy Beer, and hundreds of other things.  If you want the big chair, you have to take your lumps and put the country and the position first.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  49. 49.

    Pamoya

    I would really like to see the names of those 131 judges and the cases, but I don’t have a WSJ subscription. :(

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:

    They exist for us, not vice versa.

    THIS. A BAZILLION TIMES THIS.

    The government does not exist for those voted into or appointed into office to make their riches, be they political and/or monetary, at our expense.

    Of course this concept of governing is not the one that a too large portion of government gives a damn about.

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    I would think that his name on them would render them at least valueless, if not outright loss leaders… Though of course you are correct, their only value is his name. Wait a minute, I’m repeating myself…

  52. 52.

    topclimber

    @Barbara: Are there instances where both prosecution and defense agree to let the judge hear the case, regardless of his/her investments? I wonder if we are a little premature calling all 131 judges corrupt.

  53. 53.

    Geminid

    @JPL: Affairs are not necceszarily disqualifiers for Republicans. But I think an affair could hurt Noem next year. But even if there was no affair, her record as Governor is spotted with minor ethics problems that may add up. And her obvious national ambitions will cut both ways with South Dakota voters.

  55. 55.

    gene108

    @Cacti:

    The fact that we have rules of judicial conduct that bind all of the inferior courts but not SCOTUS is exactly ass backwards, and how we end up with Amy Covid-Barrett hearing cases for Shell Oil, where her dad was corporate counsel for 30 years.

    Or Clarence Thomas hearing Bush v. Gore, while his wife was a paid employee of the Bush campaign.

    This is something Congress can and should change, when they get into the weeds of judicial reform.

    I’m disappointed so much attention is spent on just expanding the SCOTUS, when lower courts need to be expanded too.

  56. 56.

    sab

    @topclimber: The problem is that if a lawyer does raise a stink now then next time they are assigned the judge bad feelings might linger. The issue shouldn’t even be there. The judge should recuse.

  57. 57.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @JPL:  Affairs aren’t disqualifying for Republican MEN. The women are expected to be pure and loyal.

  58. 58.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Another Scott: The problem (as indicated by Josh Marshall over at TPM) is that Manchin and Sinema don’t have any demands. Sinema basically says “Pass the bipartisan bill and then I’ll give you information about the reconciliation bill”, but she won’t actually tell anyone what she wants out of it.

    Likewise, Manchin doesn’t have any hard demands, he’s just jumping around on what may be acceptable but never has anything he explicitly wants or that he doesn’t contradict one of his statements from weeks/months earlier.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @MisterForkbeard:  Manchin will get on board when he gets his pound of flesh and can claim victory on delaying it and making it smaller. Sinema, based on her comments when she voted for the BIF earlier, wants everything to be bipartisan and wants to be in the center of the bargaining:

    In an interview with The Arizona Republic a short time later, Sinema said the legislation will touch nearly every facet of the lives of Arizonans. Every airport small and big throughout the state, for example, would get new funding.

    Underserved and low-income families should see more affordable and faster internet. The federal government will fully pay for enacted Indian water rights settlements that have for years been waiting on Congress for the funding to complete related tribal water infrastructure projects. And sanitation will be improved for an estimated 15,000 Navajo homes and thousands of other homes in tribal communities across Arizona.

    “All of those things will have real-dollar impacts in Arizona … and make a real difference in people’s lives,” she said. “What I think today is is the reflection of the United States Senate working the way that it is intended to work, and what I’ve been doing, as you know, quietly since the early spring, is just putting my head down, working together with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, first in a very small group, and then widening the circle, widening the circle, earning support.”

    She wants the BIF. If the only way she can get the BIF is voting for the (slightly(?) watered down from what we want) Reconciliation bill, then she’ll vote for the Reconciliation Bill (and get her pound of flesh there to do so).

    She knows she has power to block things. But she also knows that she has to deliver. AFAIK, the only thing she’s said about the RB is that it’s too big at $3.5T. She’s got lots of wiggle room, but doesn’t want to be the decider there. She’ll get on board.

    She can’t be a decidery mavericky bipartisan leadery leader if the BIF fails. Both will pass, and she’ll be on board.

    I have no special insight. That’s just what my gut is telling me.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    Barbara

    @topclimber:  If there are they should be sued for malpractice. The federal judiciary is not a panel of arbitrators that the parties select on their own, where they can and do waive conflicts. There is a limited pool of federal judges and they are assigned, supposedly randomly. I can’t even imagine this kind of thing happening. I try to think about a losing litigant appealing based on the judge’s conflict of interest and the defense being that he was fully informed and therefore acquiesced to the conflict? I imagine the appellate panel being so pissed off they remand with an instruction to re-assign. If it’s happening, I really would be shocked.

    What is more likely is that most of the judges did not really know that they owned the investment (maybe a spouse or trust owned it), or the amount at stake was very small.

    But I still have zero sympathy. This is not an unusual or onerous requirement. All kids of people worry about this, and if they perceive consequences, they make damn sure they are on the right side of the policy. My husband and I work for large organizations that have strict conflict of interest policies and the result of that has been that to the extent we own any individual stocks, they are selected and managed by third parties, and we don’t have nearly the same amount of power that a federal judge does.​​​

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    @gene108: There are efforts to expand the lower courts, but as you say the issue is not given the attention it deserves. Roll Call had an article on the subject after a Senate Judiciary subcommittee had a hearing on the matter. Evidently Indiana Senator Todd Young introduced a bill last year that would make a modest addition to District Court numbers and says he will introduce it again. Subcommittee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spoke of the pressing need to add more judges to districts like the Northern District of Georgia which have grown rapidly in the decades since the federal judiciary was last expanded.

    But this hearing was in March, and I doubt it received wide coverage at the time. Young and Whitehouse may be designing a piece of legislation, but Congress is wrapped up right now big budget deals and just getting President Biden’s nominees confirmed by the Senate. So I don’t think we’ll see court expansion legislation introduced until next January at the earliest.

    I wonder how much coverage it will receive then. Political attention is very Washington-centric, and the number of District Court judges or Appellate Courts is of little concern to many people. That may be a good thing. Young and Whitehouse will come up with a compromise that may have a better chance of passing if it does not become another battle in the Republican/Democratic war.

  62. 62.

    J R in WV

    @Barbara: ​

    All insider trading is a problem, but federal judges can act individually to harm the interests of others in ways no one else can, and they are virtually unchecked.

    Yet fellow commenter Scott supplies us with a long quote that applies conflict of interest law to all sorts of federal judges just above your incorrrect & false statement…

    @Another Scott: ​

  64. 64.

    trollhattan

    @JPL:

    Oh hay-ull, it just got a lot better.

    September 29, 2021 at 2:33 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard

    “A Donald Trump donor is accusing Corey Lewandowski, one of the former president’s longtime top aides, of making unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Las Vegas charity event over the weekend,” Politico reports.

    “Trashelle Odom, the wife of Idaho construction executive John Odom, alleges that Lewandowski repeatedly touched her, including on her leg and buttocks, and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms.”

    First of all, “Trashelle” improbably appears to be a real and not a Tik-Tok or YouTube name and the second item is she looks like a young edition of the governor. What is it Rick Wilson says? “Everything Trump touches turns to shit.”

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