Retired Los Angeles County Judge David Rothman became deeply interested in judicial ethics in the 1980s, leading him to teach and write on the subject for years, his family said. Courtesy photo
Retired Los Angeles Judge David Rothman, a veteran jurist who literally wrote the book on judicial ethics in California, died Tuesday in Berkeley, the Judicial Council announced. He was 87.
Rothman wrote three editions of the California Judicial Conduct Handbook between 1989 and 2005 and contributed to the fourth edition published in 2018. The tome is a mainstay of on- and off-the-bench guidance for judges on compliance with canons and ethics decisions from the California Supreme Court and the Commission on Judicial Performance.
