Special Edition
The Bench: Who Judges the Judges?
Four federal judges disciplined or charged in a single season, a workforce of thirty thousand outside the laws their employers interpret, and a complaint system that has now been tested twice on the same judge — and failed twice.
This publication normally works the retail end of human folly — the burglar who leaves his wallet, the arsonist who films himself. But folly scales. In the early summer of 2026, four federal judges — two district, two appellate — made the news for conduct that would end any ordinary career, and in each case the machinery that answered was the judiciary's own: judges reviewing judges, under a statute enforced by colleagues, with sanctions that top out at strongly worded homework. Life tenure was designed to free the bench from fear of kings and Congresses. It has also produced the cleanest experiment available in what human beings do when consequences are removed. The results are in, and they arrive below, fully sourced — because unlike some institutions in this report, we show our work.
01
The Sound Through the Wall — Northern District of Georgia, 2026
An Eleventh Circuit special committee found that District Judge Eleanor Ross conducted a two-year affair with an Atlanta police deputy chief — partly inside her chambers, during business hours, within earshot of law clerks who reported hearing it through the walls. Confronted with the complaint, Ross denied every allegation the same day, denounced them as 'outrageous' and 'baseless,' and suggested the complaining clerk had fabricated the story in retaliation. The findings, affirmed by the national Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability in May 2026, ran to three counts: the conduct in chambers, attendance at a partisan political event, and false statements material to the investigation. The affirmed sanction: a private reprimand, letters of apology to six former law clerks, and an agreement not to seek the chief judgeship.
The verdict: She lied to two chief judges about misconduct in a federal courthouse, and her sentence was correspondence. In her courtroom, that combination is called perjury and obstruction; in her chambers, it is called a growth opportunity.
Source: Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability, C.C.D. No. 26-01 (May 22, 2026)
02
Super Drunk, Your Honor — Eastern District of Michigan, 2026
District Judge Thomas Ludington's drunk-driving arrest — reported by Michigan press under the state's statutory category of 'super drunk,' a designation the legislature created because ordinary drunk proved insufficient to describe some drivers — surfaced only after a reporter uncovered it. He pleaded no contest to the DUI charge and was placed on probation. In June 2026 he was back in state court, arraigned on charges that he violated that probation by failing to submit to his required drug and alcohol testing. A federal judge, whose literal job description is deciding what happens to people who violate court-ordered conditions, is alleged to have violated his court-ordered conditions.
The verdict: The probation system worked exactly as designed, on exactly the sort of defendant it was designed for. The defendant simply turned out to be the bench.
Source: The Ethics Reporter; Detroit News
03
The Glasses on the Pavement — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 2026
Judge Ryan Nelson of the Ninth Circuit — one rung below the Supreme Court of the United States — entered a not-guilty plea in June 2026 to misdemeanor battery and malicious injury to property, after a parking-lot dispute in which, per surveillance footage and his own partial admission, he snatched another man's eyeglasses off his face and stomped them into the pavement. The charges remain pending, and he is presumed innocent; the footage, reportedly, is unambiguous about what happened to the glasses.
The verdict: A federal appellate judge resolves disputes for a living. Presented with one in a parking lot, he reached for the remedy of a twelve-year-old.
Source: The Ethics Reporter
04
Contempt of Clerk — Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 2023–2026
In December 2023, the Second Circuit reprimanded Judge Sarah Merriam for maintaining an 'overly harsh' work environment for her law clerks; the remedy was a meeting with the chief judge and a commitment to improve. In December 2025, the Legal Accountability Project filed a fresh misconduct complaint alleging chambers 'characterized by fear, oppressive control, intimidation, humiliation, and bullying' — reported details include sudden outbursts and emails composed entirely in capital letters. On April 29, 2026, Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston reprimanded Merriam a second time, now for a 'tense and challenging' work environment. The escalated, second-offense sanction: meetings with judge advisors, a management class, annual workplace training, and semiannual check-ins with her clerks for two years.
The verdict: This is the entry that matters most, because it is the experiment run twice. The first reprimand was tested against the same judge and demonstrably failed; the system's response to failed homework was to assign more homework.
Source: ABA Journal
05
One in Seventeen, Three on Paper — The Federal Judiciary, by its own numbers
The judiciary's own workplace-conduct climate survey, reported in March 2025, found that as many as 106 federal judges — roughly one in seventeen — mistreated their law clerks. In 2023, the number of law clerks nationwide who filed formal misconduct complaints under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act was three. Not three percent: three human beings, out of a workforce of thousands, against a hundred-odd judges their own survey says deserved it. The gap between those numbers is not mysterious. A clerk's career runs on a judge's reference, clerks enjoy no legal protection against retaliation, and the complaint lands on the desk of the accused judge's colleague.
The verdict: When the misconduct rate is one in seventeen and the complaint rate is three per year, the paperwork is not measuring the misconduct. It is measuring the fear.
Source: Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group, March 2025 report
06
The Courthouse Door Swings One Way — Thirty thousand employees, zero statutes
The roughly thirty thousand people who work for the federal judiciary — clerks, staff attorneys, probation officers, administrators — are not covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, nor by the other federal anti-discrimination and labor statutes their employers spend every working day interpreting for the rest of the country. Their sole recourse is the judiciary's internal dispute-resolution process, administered by the institution whose judges are the potential defendants. Congress has been asked repeatedly to extend the laws across the courthouse threshold. The judiciary's standing answer is that it can police itself. The four entries above are the policing.
The verdict: The law stops at the courthouse door — on the employees' side of it. The people with the least protection from federal judges in America are the ones who fetch their coffee.
Source: Above the Law
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