NewYorkUniversity
LawReview
Issue

Volume 82, Number 2

May 2007

Understanding “Judicial Lockjaw”: The Debate over Extrajudicial Activity

Leslie B. Dubeck

Federal judges are expected to conduct themselves differently than their counterparts in the political branches. This Note considers the policy and historical reasons used to justify this different standard of conduct and concludes that these justifications are largely unsupported or overstated. These erroneous justifications obfuscate the debate over extrajudicial conduct and may result in a suboptimal level of extrajudicial activity.