Section 3.7. Participation in Educational, Religious, Charitable, Fraternal or Civic Organizations and Activities

(A) Avocational activities. Judges may write, lecture, teach, and speak on non-legal subjects and engage in the arts, sports, and other social and recreational activities, if such avocational activities do not detract from the dignity of their office or interfere with the performance of their judicial duties.

(B) Civic and Charitable Activities. Judges may participate in civic and charitable activities that do not reflect adversely upon their impartiality or interfere with the performance of their judicial duties. Judges may serve as an officer, director, trustee, or nonlegal advisor of an educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization not conducted for the economic or political advantage of its members, subject to the following limitations:

(1) A judge shall not serve if it is likely that the organization will be engaged in proceedings that would ordinarily come before the judge or will be regularly engaged in adversary proceedings in any court.

(2) A judge shall not personally solicit funds for any educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization, or use or permit the use of the prestige of the judicial office for that purpose, but may be listed as an officer, director, or trustee of such an organization. A judge shall not be a speaker or the guest of honor at an organization’s fundraising events that are not for the advancement of the legal system, but may attend such events.

(3) A judge shall not give investment advice to such an organization.

(C) Notwithstanding any of the above, a judge may encourage lawyers to provide pro bono publico legal services.

Comment:

(1) The nature of many outside organizations is constantly changing and what may have been innocuous at one point in time may no longer be so. Cases in point are boards of hospitals and banks. Judges must constantly be vigilant to ensure that they are not involved with boards of organizations that are often before the court.

(2) Judges are also cautioned with regard to organizations of which they were members while in practice, and/or in which they remain members, such as the District Attorney’s organization, the Public Defender’s organization, and MADD, as examples only. Review should be made to make sure that a reasonable litigant appearing before the judge would not think that membership in such an organization would create an air of partiality on the part of the tribunal.