LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - The Arkansas Supreme Court clarified new ethics rules for judges after getting complaints that the rules were confusing.
The court eliminated a rule that judicial candidates avoid knowledge of who donates to their campaigns. Legal experts say the rule was nearly impossible to follow because candidates attend their fundraisers.
The rules also ban candidates from asking for donations that won’t be reported by the campaign. Legal analysts say that is aimed at organizations known as “dark money” groups that are not required to identify their donors and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on state Supreme Court elections since 2014.
Chief Justice Howard Brill declined to comment on the revised rules and Arkansas Bar Association President Denise Hoggard said the group is still studying the changes, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported (https://bit.ly/1sWAnCQ).
The revisions “achieve a measure of reform, but did not go far enough,” said Little Rock lawyer Scott Trotter, a long-time activist who appeared on panels and forums this year discussing proposed ethics rules changes.
The new rules permit judges to “make reasonable accommodations” under law to help all litigants to be heard in court, including those who represent themselves. They also allow judges and judicial candidates to accept gifts, loans and other items of value from “close friends or relatives,” but forbid them from accepting gifts from other people, including lawyers.
Additional language was added to ban judicial candidates from using endorsements from partisan elected officials and new rules bar judicial candidates from using the term “re-elect” unless they were previously elected to the same office.
A new rule allows judicial candidates to return any campaign fund surplus to a nonprofit with a 501(c)(3) tax designation, which was suggested by the Bar Association.
The revised code of conduct did not incorporate a Bar Association proposal to prohibit judges from delaying case decisions and the association did not want judges to accept gifts from friends at all.
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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, https://www.arkansasonline.com
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