News & Insights

This month’s column discusses an unusual dispute among judges from the Federal Circuit. At issue was whether 95-year-old Judge Pauline Newman could be barred from hearing or deciding cases, and whether Judge Newman must submit to medical testing to determine whether she has physical or mental disabilities that prevent her from discharging her duties.

This month’s column discusses the California trend, which has arrived in Arizona, that raises questions about the propriety of using the Rules of Professional Conduct to punish lawyer speech unconnected to judicial proceedings and whether licensure is being used as “politics by other means” to silence politically dissident lawyers. Read about various cases that raise questions about how ER 8.4(c) has jumped the tracks from prohibiting deceptive conduct and is morphing into a license for the judiciary to regulate the content of speech by conditioning a lawyer’s right to practice law on the expression of only those political statements that are approved by the judiciary, and provides a reminder of what the Rules of Professional Conduct are intended for.