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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

Kinda? I agree in principle. But not in this instance I think.

The conflict here is very weak, and most judges would not likely recuse in this case or feel shut pressure to do so. The husband worked for a 1000+ attorney firm that once had a client, and had no involvement in anything. The judge has no knowledge or involvement.

If every judge in a similar situation recused, you would likely have to move/transfer lots of cases around the country to try to find judges that could hear them.

I actually suspect the judge just may not want to deal with this high profile of a case. It can be really a mess to deal with (even before you get to the personal toll of increased death threats, etc)

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We only know the husband worked in a large company that had SBF as a client back in 2021. But chances are he was close to that case. We don't know that. The judge says she doesn't know that either, and we can take her at her word. But she certainly asked him "Do you think there could be a problem?". The husband answers "Maybe", and he does not cross any ethical boundaries about client-attorney confidentiality. Then the judge simply follows the rule "when in doubt, recuse yourself".

IANAL but it seems like it could be a basis for appeal.

And what's the point of putting in months of work hearing a case if there's a chance that it will all get nullified.

I’m not sure I see how judges recusing themselves could be grounds for appeal.

Not recusing oneself though…

That’s what they were saying.

> We only know the husband worked in a large company that had SBF as a client back in 2021

He didn't only "work" in the firm; he was a partner in it. Maybe he talked to the partner who managed the SBF work; maybe he didn't. But as a partner he'd have some justification for asking, "Hey, how's that crypto case going?" at least.

There are almost 200 partners at the firm. It's not that big a thing.

I think you’re right, but I assume the whole idea was to avoid having the formal version of this thread in an appeals court a year from now.

> not that big a thing

"Your Honor, the Prosecution suggests this is not that big a thing!"

No. Don't want to go there.

Greg was also a US attorney in the southern district for 12+ years, and special counsel for the US for 2 years in 2017 before he went back to davis again (IE davis->us attorney->davis->us attorney->davis)

That is a more interesting conflict than the Davis-Polk one to me, since he likely worked directly with the office handling the case.

Outside of that, he was at Davis since 1999.

There is simply no sane argument that, essentially anyone his quite-large firm worked for (without him even knowing about it), since 1999 should cause his wife to recuse.

It violates no ethical rules, opinions, cases, or what have you. Judges have stricter ones too, and it doesn't violate or even come close to appearing to violate any of them.

It would be laughed out of appeals.

i've not yet seen any convincing argument here.

As such, i maintain she probably did this because she didn't want the case.

> As such, i maintain she probably did this because she didn't want the case.

I was going to agree with this but then I realized and made this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34120906

Essentially I feel this is about business for the firm going forward, not anything that happened in the past.

Does it cross any boundaries of client-attorney confidentiality to say that you were someone's attorney or worked on a case? I don't believe so.

Surprisingly in some jurisdictions it does. At least in cases related to criminal defense in Poland the existence of a attorney-client relationship is protected (obviously if it comes to trial, it's eventually revealed, but it's not subpoenable up to that point).

>chances are he was close to that case

Nope. “My husband has had no involvement in any of these representations.”

> The conflict here is very weak

Yes, and the ethical bar for the judiciary is supposed to be super strict. It's not even enough to avoid conflicts of interest: one must also avoid the appearance of any potential conflicts of interest.

I'm quite aware of the judicial bar, and i don't think it even comes close to "appearance of a potential conflict". Which, as a phrase without interpretation, of course, covers literally everything (IE defendant is a vegan and I am not).

So in the end, i simply disagree with you - this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions.

> as a phrase without interpretation

That's not particularly productive: the meaning of the phrase is studied and covered ad nauseam by case law and scholarly (legal & ethical) literature.

Differences in dietary preferences is unlikely to ever be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest, although it's certainly not impossible. There would need to be "reasonable grounds" to think the judge was unable to hear both parties fairly. I know that this sounds a bit wishy-washy, but that's the legal system for you.

As a recovered lawyer (though still licensed in several states), and friends with many judges, i'm again, aware, and have read plenty of it, and been forced to talk about it at parties (unfortunately).

That is precisely why i said " this is not a close call, as the order is written, and as the bar has ever been interpreted, either by caselaw, or by ethics opinions."

What is here would never be considered reasonable grounds. It's not even close.

Outside of random people arguing on hacker news, of course.

Right on. Forget “what if every judge recused for this level of conflict!”, they already do that, and it doesn’t really put a dent in judge supply.

I think there are prominent examples where they don't. We notice those because they seem unfair. Recusals that do happen probably don't usually make headlines.

Actually, they 100% do not recuse for this level of conflict. I'm not sure why you believe otherwise, or what data you have to support.

Recusals are extremely rare, and it is common for judges to have SO's or children or .... in law firms that, at some point, represented someone before a judge, without the person having been involved. Which is the case here.

They do not recuse. So no, they do not "already do that". If they did, it really would put a dent in the judge supply - there are not that many federal judges.

I think it's a great move in this particular case just because it's so highly watched. A major motivation behind recusal is to maintain confidence in the judicial system. SBF has already been the subject of all sorts of claims of political corruption. Better that this one be squeaky clean, even if sophisticated observers might understand why this sort of connection is innocuous.

Yep. All upside, no downside. Better safe than sorry here.

It's not about the conflict being weak, it's mostly about standard setting. If it is the norm that judges recuse themselves even in case of fairly remote conflict of interest, it will make it very difficult for a judge to not recuse himself in the case of a more problematic conflict of interest.

In theory, maybe. I can buy it in places judges are elected or subject to popular anything.

In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense. It is otherwise a lifetime appointment.

One with a lucrative partner job waiting if they choose to go that route early, regardless of social reputation.

They are fairly insulated from being forced to do something based on the standards others want to set.

> In practice, federal judges can't be removed except by impeachment, and such a thing is not an impeachable offense

Conflict of interest is one of the things typically listed as impeachable judicial misconduct; not that there is any concrete boundary to “impeachable offense” since the House is free to decide any conduct is or or is not impeachable.

I suspect this might not have happened on a lower profile case. While in principle the idea here is that the court weighs the facts and the judge makes sure that it happens and ends up with a verdict, the reality is that with enough money it gets changed into some weird sports-gameshow hybrid where irrelevant bits of data are used to weasel out of responsibility.

Perhaps one of the issues here is the (apparent?) amount of personal input a judge can have, so if a judge were to dislike the taste of tomatoes and they have to hear a case on ketchup, they might act differently than a judge that doesn't really care about tomato-taste either way. But since all of this (generally) revolves around humans, removing all wiggle room is problematic as well (since laws are not humans, but are rather static).

A judge has to be impeccable. There should be no discussion at all, if the conflict is minor or major.

Other judges are avaliable. Reputation and integrity, once lost, cannot be recovered

This sort of ignores the point - it all depends how you define conflict, which is where any meat of this sort of thing is.

There is no real conflict here. At all. By any definition you will find of a conflict, or any advisory opinions, or any caselaw.

That a family member once worked for a firm that, at some point in the past, may have represented a corporation that someone worked for (they aren't even sure), where the family member:

1. did not work on it

2. has no knowledge of it

3. wasn't even aware of this until informed.

is simply not a conflict.

Someone is always going to argue you should recuse.

While recusal is super-rare, recusal motions are not.

Someone will always try to paint a conflict about something!

So your theory on reputation doesn't work in practice - you are going to get smeared either way. That's the fun of being a judge.

Genuinely curious - what is your explanation for why the recusal happened?

Your arguments paint it as clearly unusual or invalid but not knowing you or the details of the case, what is your case for believing you rather than the facts of the case, that a professional judge made this decision? Could you lay out an alternative explanation for why this happened?

i.e. you're making strong claims that this is obviously wrong, yet not explaining why it happened. Barring detailed knowledge, tie usually goes to reality rather than the HN commenter.

It's a huge case being watched by the entire world, even if there is a minuscule chance of it causing an actual issue, or there is the possible bad optics, I fail to see why the judge wouldn't do it. Nobody is going to excuse themselves on these terms for regular cases where the entire world isn't watching, but why risk anything in this case?

The law might be blind -or at least should-, but the audience isn't and that audience might very well include federal agencies and nutjobs.

The conflict may be weak, bur the case has a much higher profile than normal.

Even a reasonable excuse won't stop a headline that will muck up things.

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