Federal judges - like those who rule critically in First Amendment cases and porn cases - may not want their personal financial information going into cyberspace, but a House subcommittee which oversees the federal courts is all but saying not so fast, boys - they just might hold public hearings on the judges' decision.
North Carolina Republican Howard Coble, in fact, says the judges' decision was "possible subterfuge" giving "additional weight" to Americans' distrust toward public officials. That comes a day after the Judicial Conference Committee on Financial Disclosure said it would deny a request from APBNews for 1998 financial documents for all 1,600 federal judges, on ground that disclosure could "endanger" the judges.
APBNews says it will force the issue in court. Coble plans to take the issue up with Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee of which Coble's subcommittee on courts and intellectual property. A Hyde spokesman tells APBNews the veteran Republican supports the hearings idea. The ranking Democrat on Coble's subcommittee, California Rep. Howard Berman, says the judges' decision bothers him and he's "highly skeptical" of the judges' committee's decision, APBNews says.
"I just feel that any public official paid by taxes is obliged to divulge that information," Coble tells APBNews. "Judges may not have anything to conceal, but the perception is such."
House Judiciary Committee spokesman Sam Stratman says Hyde supports Coble's call for hearings. "It is certainly appropriate for an issue such as this to be fed into a hearing," Stratman said. "It's not a given by any means, but the subcommittee [on Courts and Intellectual Property] seems like the most appropriate venue," he tells APBNews, though hearings wouldn't happen until next year.
The judges' committee cites a provision barring "disclosure of a report to any person who has not made a written application" for the material. In effect, APBNews says, each person viewing the material on the Internet would need to make a specific written request.
But news organizations like the Kansas City Star and New York's WNBC-TV have published and keep copies of federal judges' financial disclosure reports on their Web sites, says APBNews. And it isn't clear whether the judges will take action to force them to withdraw the information. The Star says they published the disclosure reports as part of a series on area judges presiding over cases involving corporations in which they owned stock.
"Clearly, as our series showed, there are some problems with conflicts," says Star editor Mark Zieman to APBNews. "The only way for these to come to light is to disseminate the information. The Internet is another distribution method, and how the news is distributed isn't up to the source."
An attorney for the New York Daily News says the judges' committee ruling could have "long-lasting" effects, like limiting the public's ability to learn about those in or about to join the judiciary. "I fear the judges are restricting access to information because they don't like public scrutiny," says News attorney Eve Burton to APBNews.
Personal information on federal judges has been public record for two decades, but last year federal disclosure law changed to let the judiciary withhold information for individual judges on grounds of security.
Freedom Forum ombudsman Paul McMasters says, more or less, what's the big deal about online information? "Americans have always placed a premium on their privacy and constantly fret about the possibility of personal information falling into the wrong hands," he writes in his column for Freedom Forum's Web site. "But the possibility of such information falling into the wrong medium - namely the Internet - makes many of us downright apoplectic.
"We seem to have grown more resigned to the idea of personal facts stored in government and corporate files," he continues. "But any move to post those same facts on the Internet, or a Web page, panics otherwise sane and sober people - such as judges and members of Congress. When confronted with that possibility, they inevitably begin to jabber excitedly about terrorists, murderers and the unimaginable horrors that electronic access might provoke."
McMasters says electronic records can be accessed and assembled faster, manipulated more simply, and merged more readily with other information. "It may be the idea of unknown people in unknown numbers pawing through our privacy that is uniquely disquieting," he writes.
But he also says it's important to have judges' financial disclosure records available because "(p)laintiffs, defendants, lawyers, scholars and others all have valid reasons for accessing such information without having to identify themselves to judges they may be appearing before.
"In addition, journalists and public interest groups have produced reports showing hundreds of instances of judges hearing cases in which they had a conflict of interest. Having the finance records online would make such reports more frequent and accurate."
