Opinion ID: 2600337
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Violations of Judicial Conduct Code/Attorney's Fee Award

Text: By no means do I suggest that the judges' inattention to the Division's formal requirement should be condoned. To the contrary, even though their failure to file personal declarations turned out to be merely technical violations, the judges' inattention to the filing requirement nevertheless failed to comport with their ethical duty to maintain the highest standards of judicial conduct. [44] Although the noncompliance here does not warrant removal, I think that it certainly warrants investigation by the Commission and potentially justifies imposition of public reprimand as a sanction. For the same reason, I would conclude that the superior court's award of prevailing-party fees to the judges was inappropriate. Even as technical violations, the judges' conduct raised serious concerns and predictably led to this litigation. Given the novel issues raised by the judges' conduct and the compelling nature of the state's duty to enforce Alaska's election laws, the Division and the state could hardly have been expected to overlook the judges' violationswhether technical or not. In my view, equity and the interests of justice must bar the judges from recovering prevailing-party attorney's fees, even though their non-compliance does not warrant removing them from office. Today's opinion will require the superior court to vacate its award of attorney's fees to the judges. To this extent I concur in the opinion.