Bureaucracy Loves Secrecy
Behind the thousands of judges that get away with bad behavior in this country, there are personnel who support them in daily operations. And those personnel are almost never the ones filing complaints.
Examining the 2021 Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission Annual Report, the numbers tell the story directly:
Lawyers accounted for only 6 percent of all complaints filed with the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission in 2021, despite appearing before judges daily and witnessing misconduct firsthand.
Court staff, who work alongside judges in every proceeding, made up less than 1 percent of JTC complaints. They see everything. They report almost nothing.
It begs the question: shouldn’t there be mandatory reporting to keep unprofessional judges and prosecutors in check? Why is it allowed to go months or years before someone finally does something about it?
Codes of Conduct Aren’t Enough
Multiple levels of the court have codes of conduct, documents outlining appropriate behavior. The codes exist. The enforcement does not.
One could argue that the responsibility to report misconduct is implicit, hidden within Section 5, Paragraph C of the court employee model code. The expanded analysis states:
“Disregarding rules/orders provided by the court allows for confusion and a decline in overall productivity that compromises the concept of professionalism.”
Source: NACM Model Code of Conduct for Court Employees (with Analysis)
The Moral Process Gap
This is a moral process gap in not just Michigan, but America’s criminal justice system. The system wrongfully depends on judges and attorneys to self-govern and curb bad behavior. Obviously, they are doing a terrible job at this task.
Just as teachers and psychologists are mandated reporters when they witness child abuse, court employees should be required to report bad actors in the legal system to ensure fairness in their community. The comparison is not exaggerated. Both involve a professional who is uniquely positioned to witness harm, who has institutional relationships that create pressure to stay silent, and who currently relies on voluntary compliance that fails most of the time.
Court staff see judicial misconduct in every proceeding. They are not one-time litigants who appear before a judge once and leave. They are daily witnesses with institutional knowledge of patterns no individual complaint can capture alone. Their silence, whether knowing or not, enables the system to continue operating as it does.
At minimum, a meaningful mandatory reporting structure for court employees would need: a clear and specific definition of what conduct must be reported, protection from retaliation for those who report, a secure reporting channel that does not route through the same courthouse leadership, and consequences for failure to report when misconduct was observed. None of these currently exist in Michigan’s court system in any meaningful form. They exist in mandated reporter frameworks for child abuse. They should exist here.
2021 Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission Annual Report — courts.michigan.gov ?
Codes of ConductMichigan Code of Judicial Conduct — courts.michigan.gov ?
Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct — courts.michigan.gov ?
Michigan Model Code of Conduct for Court Employees — courts.michigan.gov ?
NACM Model Code of Conduct for Court Employees (with Analysis) — nacmnet.org ?
Reporting ObligationsMichigan Bar Journal — Reviewing the Obligation to Report Potential Misconduct — michbar.org ?
Reuters — Special Report: USA Judges Misconduct — reuters.com ?
