BJI in the News

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

The erosion of the court’s public esteem is not due entirely to the tenor of its recent decisions, UC Berkeley law professor Jeremy Fogel, a former federal and California state judge and currently executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, told the committee. Among other important factors, Fogel mentioned “a persistently hyperpartisan political environment … and the pervasiveness of social media as a source of misinformation and disinformation about the law, the judicial process and the judges and justices to whom that process is entrusted.”

Former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, now executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC-Berkeley Law School, said in prepared remarks it was “awkward” for him to testify because he admires Roberts and understands the complications of adopting a code of ethics for the justices.

Coverage of the hearing on Supreme Court Ethics in which The Honorable Jeremy Fogel, Berkeley Judicial Institute Executive Director participated.

Jeremy Fogel, a former federal district judge and the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, said other federal judges on the lower courts would benefit alongside the public from the Supreme Court’s taking a more active stance on ethics.

“The system is not set up to deal with the underlying problems. It’s set up to deal with the legal problems,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge in San Jose who now heads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law. “The system is in some ways rigid and inflexible.”

“The judges we interviewed were thoughtful, sincere, and serious about their commitment to law clerk diversity as each of them defines it,” said the study’s co-author, former California federal Judge and head of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law Jeremy Fogel. “The challenge for many of them is translating that commitment into specific practices that actually achieve the outcomes they seek.” 

The Berkeley Judicial Institute’s new study on law clerk diversity is featured.