Editorial: Judicial ethics will swing like a two-sided sword

Progressives have made ethics scandals out of conservative judges mixing with conservative friends or speaking at Federalist Society events.

So what are we to make of the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) working to enlist judges in its anti-fossil-fuel campaign, as detailed by the American Energy Institute in a new report?

The 55-year-old Environmental Law Institute (ELI) touts itself as a nonprofit that educates attorneys and judges about such subjects as endangered species, energy and climate science. It also “partners” with the Federal Judicial Center, which is the official education and research shop for federal courts and whose titular head is Chief Justice John Roberts.

In 2018 the ELI launched the Climate Judiciary Project with the stated goal of providing judges with “authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.” You can guess how it defines “objective.”

As ELI director of “judicial education” Sandra Nichols Thiam explained in 2022, the Climate Judiciary Project’s goal is the “development of a body of law that supports climate action.” Translation: Use the judiciary to support or even impose climate policies that climate alarmists can’t enact through the political branches.

The CJP doesn’t disclose the identities of judges who have attended its colloquiums. But its website boasts testimonials from unidentified judges and says that more than 2,000 judges have attended more than 44 of its events, including one at a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals conclave in 2019. The Ninth Circuit is a hot spot for climate-related lawsuits. Notably, the outfit’s “curriculum” has been developed by law professors assisting lawsuits by local governments against oil and gas companies.

It’s fine with us if judges attend seminars to learn more about the climate and environmental science. Judges aren’t monks and need to be familiar with important scientific facts and debates. One reason jackpot jury verdicts are so common in product-liability suits is jury ignorance about basic science.

The problem is the left’s double standard. Progressives and the press corps claim that judges who speak to conservative groups or attend their seminars are guilty of conflicts of interest. They even made an effort through the Judicial Conference to bar Justices from attending meetings of the Federalist Society, a legal organization that espouses constitutional originalism. But they are mute about the easy access to judges by the Climate Judiciary Project.

Progressives and their friends at ProPublica and the New York Times say Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are tainted by their social connections with conservative donors and interactions with constitutional lawyers. They demand that the Justices recuse themselves from cases, despite no evident conflict of interest.

But under the left’s ethics standard, every judge who attends a Climate Judiciary Project event should have to step aside from climate-related cases. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and his Senate sidecar Dick Durbin are trying to use ethics as a political weapon against conservative Justices, but watch out: It’s a double-edged sword.