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The Judicial Ethics Of Criminal Law Adjudication, Keith Swisher

Keith Swisher

Judges in the United States regularly (and often harshly) are disciplined for “bad” criminal law decisions. On a number of levels, it is baffling that this ethical “Rule” — punishing judges for errors of adjudication — has never been the subject of in-depth critical analysis. Thus, this Article is surprisingly the first scholarly work fully deconstructing the Rule (along with attendant considerations in criminal law adjudication) and addressing directly many of the tough questions that have been avoided or mistreated. This Article begins by examining an unexamined, “yet earthshaking” movement—that is, the modern invention of using judicial conduct commissions (“judge …