The cliche is "sober as a judge" not "silent as a judge," but the phenomenon of sitting judges expressing strong public views on subjects that may be related to cases that could come before them is (notwithstanding the existence of Judge Richard Posner) relatively rare. On the heels of a controversial rebuke of Judge Shira Scheindlin for her comments concerning "stop and frisk," legal ethics guru Stephen Gillers, writing at Legal Ethics Forum, suggests the game is on. The latest trigger to this accelerating argument is this essay by federal district judge Jed Rakoff in the New York Review of Books blog -- "The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?," further publicized by Adam Liptak in the New York Times.
To misquote Steve Martin, "Well, recuuuuuuse me!"
