Judicial Candidates Can “Friend” Lawyers On Facebook
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Broward judicial candidate Nate Klitsberg can be your friend.
Nate Klitsberg
An advisory opinion Klitsberg just received from the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee states he can continue to friend lawyers on Facebook.
Klitsberg asked for the opinion in December after a ruling from the JEAC that judges can’t friend lawyers.
The JEAC cited in their ruling Canon 2B of the Code of Judicial Conduct.
That Canon states: “A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.
But Klitsberg wanted clarification. He wanted to know if the same ruling covered judicial candidates as well as judges.
This week he got clarification.
“Canon 2(B) does not apply to judicial candidates, and we are free to accept as Facebook “friends lawyers who may subsequently appear in a court to which we might subsequently be elected, Klitsberg says he was told.
So his 384 friends, many of them lawyers, can stay on his Facebook page.
Klitsberg said he would immediately “defriend” all lawyers “if I’m lucky enough to be elected, even when I am a judge-elect.
He is running in the now crowded Group 26 County Court race against County Court Judge Lee Seidman and three other challengers.
March 23rd, 2010 at 3:25 pm
The JQC sends me an email re:my Hurley Complaint and I snagged Zloch’s Disclosure Statements.
Interested?
What’s the magic word?
http://www.myactsofsedition.com/my_acts_of_sedition/2010/03/a-mensa-et-thoro.html
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I do not want to be his friend.
June 23rd, 2011 at 11:27 am
Where’s the link to the JEAC opinion? I didn’t see it on their site.