The Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics responds to written inquiries from New York state’s approximately 3,600 judges and justices, as well as hundreds of judicial hearing officers, support magistrates, court attorney-referees, and judicial candidates (both judges and non-judges seeking election to judicial office). The committee interprets the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct (22 NYCRR Part 100) and, to the extent applicable, the Code of Judicial Conduct. The committee consists of 27 current and retired judges, and is co-chaired by the Honorable Margaret Walsh, a justice of the supreme court in Albany County, and the Honorable Lillian Wan, an associate justice of the appellate division, second department.
Digest: A judge need not disqualify merely because an attorney in the case shares office space with the judge’s attorney sibling, where the attorneys maintain separate and independent law practices and do not share support staff or letterhead or otherwise hold themselves out as associated in the practice of law.
