Popular confidence in the courts requires the conviction that judges are disinterested, open to the facts, attentive to the law, reasonable and careful. Judiciousness is the name we give to those virtues. On Oct. 31, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted a motion to stay the remedial order in a recently concluded stop-and-frisk case, Floyd v. City of New York. It also ordered, on its own motion and without notice to the parties, that the trial court judge, Shira Scheindlin, be removed, concluding that her statements—in published interviews and on the record in court proceedings—compromised the appearance of impartiality of the court in violation of the Code of Conduct of U.S. Judges.
The result was a predictable maelstrom. The editorial pages and pundits erupted. The city and the police demanded the liability judgment be vacated. The judge, outraged at the attack on her conduct, enlisted aid from a raft of prominent law professors. And the plaintiffs demanded immediate en banc review. A raft of intervenors sought to join, including police unions, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general and district judge.
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