Digest: (1) This Committee, unlike an individual judge, cannot determine the constitutionality of the enabling statute for a school bus stop-arm violation monitoring program nor whether any resulting guidelines, requirements, directives, forms, notifications or advisements emanating from that statute are lawful and thus ethically permissible. (2) A judge must comply with legal mandates. Absent a legal requirement to do so, a judge should not voluntarily comply with guidelines that are not directly enabled by the law, to the extent that they require a judge to engage in ethically impermissible conduct.
Rules: Judiciary Law § 212(2)(l); VTL § 1174-a; 22 NYCRR 100.2; 100.2(A); 100.3(B)(1); 101.1; Opinions 16-140; 16-68; 14-34; 11-87; 01-100/01-101; Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137 (1803).
