Court Opinion

ID: 9696885
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:00:59.906461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:27.465316
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring.
I join with the Majority in concluding that the Respondent Judges must forfeit their offices. However, I write separately to caution the Board that its role in a quasi-judicial setting is not to condemn the system of selecting our judiciary. This is a political question best left to the political arena.
To suggest that the elective process is flawed and partially to blame for the events leading up to today’s conclusion, or that the political climate tended to blight the moral sensitivities of these Respondents, is to insult the integrity of every honest judge who has ever been the product of this selective process and who was not touched by the so-called “flaws” or “political climate.”
The Respondents reach the end of their respective judicial careers today because they forgot, or never learned, that in the human experience money has never been used in exchanging gifts with public officials occupying positions of *457public trust. From the time of Justinian The Great, the receipt of monetary gifts by Judges has been cause for immediate forfeiture "of office. The manner of selecting a judge must never be interposed as an excuse for selling one’s public office.