“Won’t the judge get really pissed if I turn him in?”

My fellow self-represented litigant, be bold.

After all, you searched out this information because the judge is already treating you unfairly, favoring the party who is represented by attorneys. You did not try to find an unethical judge when you filed a case. And if someone else is suing you, you definitely did not hope to come across a cheat in a black robe. You hoped for a quick and economical path to justice. The judge is the one who chose to cause trouble and the judge will take as many of your rights from you as the thug can get away with. Fight back.

Statistically, most of the ethics complaints will be determined in favor of the judge. One of my complaints resulted in a “severe” public admonishment against the judicial officer, Commissioner Alan H. Friedenthal, deceased. There were private disciplinary actions taken that are consistent with complaints I filed against Judge Elizabeth Feffer (doing arbitrations, last I checked) and Judge Marjorie Steinberg (who retired in 2011).

If your judge is in Federal Court, find information here.

“The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980(link is external), 28 U.S.C. §§ 351–364, establishes a process by which any person can file a complaint alleging a federal judge has engaged in “conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts” or has become, by reason of a mental or physical disability, “unable to discharge all the duties” of the judicial office.

“The Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings (pdf), as amended on March 12, 2019, provide mandatory and nationally uniform provisions governing the substantive and procedural aspects of judicial conduct and disability proceedings under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act.

“The judicial conduct and disability review process cannot be used to challenge the correctness of a judge’s decision in a case. A judicial decision that is unfavorable to a litigant does not alone establish misconduct or a disability.”

To put it in the vernacular, an ethics complaint must address corruption, not stupidity. The way I prevailed on my complaint against Alan Friedenthal is that he was both corrupt and stupid. He made a statement in open court, in front of an honest court reporter, proudly revealing that he was reading this blog.

Here is what I wrote to the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission. It was early in the case. The JDDC ruled in favor of Judge Susan Weaver and this only emboldened her. You can download the appeal written years later, which discusses amongst other things, how the transcript of the hearing discussed in the JDDC complaint was fictionalized by Court Reporter Jana Perry. There has yet to be a publication of the actual audio recording.