legal team meeting Photo: Natee Meepian/Adobe Stock

The Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics responds to written inquiries from New York state's approximately 3,600 judges and justices, as well as hundreds of judicial hearing officers, support magistrates, court attorney-referees, and judicial candidates (both judges and non-judges seeking election to judicial office). The committee interprets the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct (22 NYCRR Part 100) and, to the extent applicable, the Code of Judicial Conduct. The committee consists of 28 current and retired judges, and is co-chaired by the Honorable Debra L. Givens, an acting justice of the supreme court in Erie County, and the Honorable Lillian Wan, an associate justice of the appellate division, second department.

Digest: A judge who was a supervising assistant district attorney while the district attorney's office investigated allegations of professional misconduct by an attorney colleague, but who was not involved in investigating or referring the attorney for discipline, is not disqualified from matters in which the attorney appears unless the judge believes he/she cannot be fair and impartial in those cases.