Were you aware of this? UFB.
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Despite Exposés and Embarrassments, Hundreds of Judges Preside in New York Without Law Degrees
A review of the work of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct chronicles the costs of a tradition resistant to change.
by Joe Sexton
ProPublica, June 26, 2017, 2:44 p.m.
propublica.org
The news releases are sent out with considerable regularity, brief and basic accounts of actions taken by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct: A judge is sanctioned for misconduct on the bench; another agrees to give up their job because of questionable behavior in his or her private life.
Many of the announcements note that the judges, as part of their agreement with the commission, pledge to never seek or accept a job as a judge again. And some of the announcements include a fact that still packs a 21st century punch of surprise: The judges being disciplined are not, and never have been, lawyers.
Take, for instance, the announcement the commission issued today, June 26: “The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct announced that Gary M. Poole, a Justice of the Rose Town Court, Wayne County, will resign from office effective July 1, 2017, and has agreed never to seek or accept judicial office at any time in the future.”
Poole consented to resign after the commission began investigating claims that he engaged in “repeated, undignified and discourteous conduct toward a woman with whom he had been involved romantically.”
Poole agreed to accept the commission’s action and signed a stipulation laying out the charges and results. He also waived any confidentiality protections and signed the stipulation knowing it would be made public.
“Among other things,” the commission’s announcement read, “the judge was alleged to have yelled demeaning and derogatory things about her and her new boyfriend in public, spuriously threatened her with prosecution, demanded the return of certain personal property and threatened to encourage her ex-husband to commence a custody battle over her children.”
And then the final line: “Judge Poole, who is not an attorney, has served as a Justice of the Rose Town Court since 1993.”
That some judges in New York state are not required to be lawyers, or to have any formal legal training, has been a little-understood fact for much of the last century. It has, on occasion, drawn some notice. In 2006, The New York Times published a broad and damning series on the work of what are known as town and village justices, some 2,000 or so of whom hold court in the state. It made for remarkable reading:
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