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Consistent with the purposes for which it was created, it is the policy of the American College of Trial Lawyers to undertake to address in an appropriate manner threats to judicial independence wherever they manifest themselves. The professional obligations of lawyers, individually and collectively, both to our system of justice and to those who serve on the bench, demand no less of us.
In 2018, the College formed a Task Force on Judicial In- dependence which drafted a sequel to the 2006 White Paper, The Need to Promote and Defend Fair and Impartial Courts. That paper was issued by the College’s Board of Regents in March 2019 and it summarized the increas- ing threats to judicial independence posed by the actions and statements of President Trump, statements and ini- tiatives designed to curb judicial independence by other national and local politicians from both major parties, a proliferation of false and misleading media reports and social media commentary attacking judicial decisions, lo- cal recall elections triggered by unpopular rulings, and coercive budget cuts imposed by state legislatures. I also commend review of that 2019 White Paper to all Fellows.
The Task Force on Judicial Independence has since been made a permanent General Committee of the College. The Committee’s mandate is, among other things “to coordinate, publicize and track the College’s timely re-
sponse to threats to the judiciary or attacks on judges.” It should be no surprise to our Fellows that this Committee has been extremely busy since its formation. The Committee currently consists of twenty-seven members from throughout the United States and Canada; three of those members are former federal judges who served on the bench with great distinction. In May 2023, given the increasing level of vitriolic attacks on judges by politicians of both major parties, the Committee developed a set of guidelines for the Executive Committee to use in determining when the College should respond to attacks on judges and justices. Significant among those guidelines is the statement that a formal public response from the College should ordinarily be issued within forty-eight hours of the event giving rise to the response. There are additional guidelines suggesting that, at times, the College’s response might better come from a local State or Province Committee, rather than the Executive Committee or Board of Regents, depending on the nature of the matter prompting the attack. Our local State and Province Committees have issued such statements on several occasions during my time as a Regent and officer of the College.
Finally, there are several substantive guidelines developed by the Judicial Independence Com- mittee describing when a response from the College is called for; these guidelines are designed to separate legitimate criticism of a judicial ruling by a party or politician from an attack that
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