BJI in the News

“It really is tremendously hard on almost anybody when you get the kinds of threats that people are getting now — the language and the specific threats that are made. The impact on the judges, the impact on the judges’ families and loved ones, the impact just on the routines of their life, I think that’s underreported,” said Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute which published the report “Threats to the Independence of the Federal Judiciary,” along with New York University School of Law’s Rule of Law Lab.

Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute said lawyers have “a direct stake in an independent judiciary and in the rule of law and in public confidence in the system” and can help explain concepts such as judicial independence, checks and balances and the constitutional role of the courts to the public. 

UC Berkeley Law, Berkeley Judicial Institute Executive Director Judge Jeremy Fogel joins Legal Face-Off to discuss the latest on judiciary threats around the country.

Judge Jeremey Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute joins Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick to discuss threats against American judges.

Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director Berkeley Judicial Institute, discusses a new ethics advisory opinion which permits sitting federal judges to speak openly about threats against the judiciary and address “persecution.”

“It’s more common for public officials to say things about judges that go beyond respectful disagreement with a decision,” said former U.S. district judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “They tend to be more personal in nature,” added Fogel, who served in the Northern District of California. “I don’t think that the court system is perfect by any means… but I think the uptick in misconduct complaints, that is sort of an environmental result of people criticizing the courts more in the public sphere.”

Retired Judge and Executive Director, Berkeley Judicial Institute Jeremy Fogel said the city attorney’s phone call would not be something the State Bar would follow up on for an ethics review if — as her campaign manager said — she did not know Fox was an expert witness in the case, and thus, it sounds like there was no intentional wrongdoing.

“Most district judges really try hard to get these cases right, and they spend a lot of time doing that,” Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, told Law360 Pulse. “So to go through that whole process, and to have an evidentiary hearing and to issue a preliminary injunction and to do the legal analysis with the precedent that you have, and then have an emergency docket order that says nothing other than the district court order is set aside or stayed,” Judge Fogel said, “that is just not a good look.”

“The judge has to believe that some line may have been crossed that you can’t ignore,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director, Berkeley Judicial Institute. Fogel said the issues raised by Boasberg’s contempt probe — whether the migrants were deprived of their due process rights and whether the court’s authority was flouted — meet that standard.

“There are people in the judiciary who are afraid that judicial security for the lower courts and politics are getting played off each other, and no one wants to be in that position,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired judge who served in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. “In the short term, I think that many in the judiciary will believe that their need for increased security because of threats against judges is being neglected,” Fogel said. “In the longer term, I think that problems with understaffing and aging infrastructure will increase the chances of a tragic incident.”

“Disclosing can mitigate the appearance of impropriety,” said Jeremy Fogel, the executive director of the University of California, Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge. “I think people ought to disclose. That’s what I would have done.”

“Judges are free to use their opinions to comment on the law and larger issues, as long as the focus of the opinion is right,” said Fogel, who now directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law. “Legal opinions are not usually that exciting. He was trying to say, this is really important.”

For Jeremy Fogel, a former federal trial judge in California and executive director, Berkeley Judicial Institute, increasing the focus on judicial well-being is a project decades in the making.

Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director, Berkeley Judicial Institute weighs in on attacks on the judiciary.

“They want somebody that they can trust who wouldn’t use the position as a political bullhorn or for carrying out the administration’s broader political agenda,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute when discussing judicial district practices and culture for voting on whether to ratify an interim U.S. attorney.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute discusses the growing call for judges to control their security force.

“All of this adds to a sense of the judiciary being under attack,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former judge in California who now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “Whether or not it’s going to be successful, it’s seen as part of a broader attempt to weaken or delegitimize the judiciary.”

Is the arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan the start of Trump’s open war on judges? Berkeley Judicial Institute’s Judge Jeremy Fogel joined host Mary Harris on Slate’s “What Next” podcast to discuss.

“Cutting all the security from one judge or one courthouse — stuff like that hasn’t happened, and I don’t expect it to,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “But, you never know. Because it’s fair to say that limits are being tested everywhere. Judges worry that it could happen.”

“If they are trying to work out a diplomatic solution, and if the plaintiffs are satisfied that they’re actually trying to do that, it’s really kind of in their interest to let that play out,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “One way or the other, there’s some mutual expectation that the facts on the ground are going to change” in the coming week.

“I think [the legal community is] worried that there’s going to be a loss of independence,” said retired Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “There are a lot of fears.”

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge, said no judge in the nation’s history has been removed “because of dissatisfaction with his or her rulings.” But threats of impeachment “contribute to a toxic environment that increases the difficulty of an already difficult job,” said Fogel, who now leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

Professor Amanda Tyler and Jeremy Fogel, director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law School weigh in on proposed legislation to expand the federal judiciary.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former California federal judge weighs in on the Supreme Court ethics debate.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former California federal judge weighs in on a push for legislation expanding the judiciary,

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge and a judicial ethics expert, said expanding the court to 15 justices might improve the administration of the high court and cool the rancorous politics around nominating justices.

“Displaying those particular flags creates the appearance at least that the justice is signifying agreement with those viewpoints at a time when there are cases before the court where those viewpoints are relevant,” said Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School.

“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said in an interview. “The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”

Jeremy Fogel, the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said it’s “unfortunate” that Supreme Court ethics have become such a partisan issue, which has prevented the country from having a real discussion about how to handle the behavior of the justices. 

Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute, said the timing of Trump’s statement is as significant as what he said, because it could create the impression that when Cannon rules, she is responding in part to what the former president has said.

“In my 30 years as a trial judge, I have never seen an order like this,” said Jeremy Fogel, who served on the federal bench in California and now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who has also worked extensively on the issues of judicial ethics and mental health, said the situation surrounding Newman’s suspension illustrates broader problems with how the federal judiciary deals with aging in its ranks. Fogel said a protocol to assess judges’ cognitive function on a regular basis, implemented by the judiciary in consultation with experts, could reduce the kinds of confrontations that can emerge when a particular judge appears to show signs of decline.

Former U.S. District Judge Jeremey Fogel who is currently executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute discusses ethics at the Supreme Court.

The code’s value “will depend in large part on whether and to what extent individual justices are involved in future ethical controversies,” said former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at Berkeley Law. “My impression is that the process of getting to this point has made the justices more intentional about public trust and confidence and the impact of ethical issues.” 

Retired U.S. District Judge and Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute Jeremy Fogel said the careful wording of the ethics code and its introductory statement suggest the justices, led by Roberts, approached it as if they were crafting an opinion.

“The usual inquiry at the beginning of a term is, ‘What are the big cases and how is the court likely to rule on those cases?'” retired federal judge Jeremy Fogel, who heads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said in an interview. “But the question about the court’s administration of its own business – I don’t remember ever seeing that at the beginning of a term.”

“In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures and executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute in California, said Cannon made “two fairly significant mistakes” during jury selection in the June trial, but said it’s hard to gauge their consequences because the trial did not move forward.

Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial institute discusses ethics at the Supreme Court with Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

“There’s a desire in both professions to get at the truth and figure out what the evidence points to and that kind of thing, but I think journalists and judges go about it differently,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

The Honorable Jeremy Fogel, Executive Director of Berkeley Law’s Berkeley Judicial Institute comments on controversies over perks accepted by Supreme Court justices.

“I’ve always marveled at the fact that a lot of people think that courts are like ‘Judge Judy,’ or that [they are like] some other show they see on TV,” said Judge Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute. “When I was a young lawyer, they expected you to do what Perry Mason did: produce the guilty person.”

Retired U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who presided in the Northern District of California, said judges are “uniquely situated” to educate the public as neutral parties. And they’re encouraged by most codes of conduct to do so, said Fogel, who now serves as executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.

“If charges are filed, defense counsel will ask for discovery of all evidence known to the D.A. at the time that she expressed her initial opinion, on the basis that the evidence is reasonably likely to be exculpatory,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and now executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law School