The Judicial Standards Commission and Judicial Discipline

Judgeships in North Carolina’s trial and appellate courts are elected offices. Thus, it often is said that the ballot box is the mechanism for holding the state’s judicial officials accountable. There is, however, another way in which judges may be held to account for misconduct: through disciplinary proceedings initiated by the Judicial Standards Commission. Those proceedings led to the North Carolina’s Supreme Court’s imposition of public discipline for three judges in 2020 and two more judges in 2021. The Judicial Standards Commission’s recently released annual report describes the nature of its work, its composition, and its increasing workload. What is the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission? The North Carolina Constitution was amended effective January 1, 1973, to require the General Assembly to prescribe a procedure, in addition to impeachment, for the censure and removal of a justice or judge of the General Court of Justice for willful misconduct in office, willful and persistent failure to perform his or her duties, habitual intemperance, conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, or conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute. See N.C. Const. Art. IV, Sec. 17. Legislation accompanying this amendment created the Judicial Standards Commission, which was then and is now charged with investigating complaints and making recommendations to the North Carolina Supreme Court for the censure or removal of a judge or justice. See S.L. 1971, c. 590; see also G.S. 7A, Article 30. The 1973 constitutional amendment also required the General Assembly to prescribe a [...]