Judicial self-discipline should be removed from the hands of federal judges. It doesn't work and leaves victims of judicial misconduct without a remedy.

Try suing a federal judge within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit for misconduct during court proceedings.

Most likely, your lawsuit will be tossed for "lack of jurisdiction" on the basis of the concept of "absolute judicial immunity", even for malicious and corrupt acts on the bench.

Yet, absolute judicial immunity for malicious and corrupt acts on the bench was given by the judiciary to itself because of the claim by the judiciary that an alternative remedy is available - the remedy of judicial discipline for acts ON THE BENCH.

Shown below are the rules defining judicial misconduct in the 2nd Circuit, they can be found here.  Please, note that in federal courts, there is no independent body judging judges whether they commit misconduct (short of impeachment - which is practically impossible to attain due to complexity of the rules).  In the 2nd Circuit, judges judge themselves - with predictable results.

First, judges invent rules governing their own misconduct - also with predictable results.

According to the 2nd Circuit rules, this is misconduct that is subject to discipline:

It is misconduct off the bench.  Try proving any of the above.  Note that the only issues pertaining to conduct on the bench are:

Rule 3 (1)(C)  - ex parte communications;
Rule 3  (1)(D) - treating litigants or attorneys in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner (and that is a judgment call, and, judging by the number of judges disciplined in federal courts - practically none in 100 years), you can guess how judges judge themselves.

That's it.

There is no mentioning in the misconduct subject to discipline of making malicious or corrupt decisions on the bench - conduct covered by judicial immunity BECAUSE of the alleged AVAILABILITY of judicial discipline ON THAT SAME ISSUE - malicious and corrupt conduct on the bench.

Yet, look at what the 2nd Circuit excluded from judicial misconduct subject to discipline:

Even if the judge is accused of making a corrupt decision on the bench - if the judge made a decision because he received a bribe, engaged in an ex parte contact, if his decision involved racial or ethnic bias, or personally derogatory remarks - the merits of the case, the actual MAKING of the judicial decision BECAUSE the judge received a bribe, BECAUSE the judge fixed the case after an ex parte communication, BECAUSE the judge made a decision based on his personal racial, ethnic or other impermissible personal bias - the judge's misconduct in MAKING that corrupt or malicious decision is not even addressable as misconduct in the 2nd Circuit.

Delays in decisions (and it takes sometimes a YEAR for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York to render decisions on motions) are also not misconduct.

Yet, litigants are held to the strictest standards by the district courts and by the 2nd Circuit and appeals, for example, are not accepted past a rigorous (and restricted for civil rights cases) deadline unless "a serious illness or death in the family".  Commitments at work, problems at school with children, commitments in other courts for counsel - all of that is no important to the 2nd Circuit.

Yet, their own delays in rendering decisions is not misconduct and not addressable in any manner other than on appeal - and a delay in rendering a federal appellate decision is not grounds for a writ of certiorari.

Yet another issue of grave concern is that the rules jump to declining review of any allegations of judicial misconduct pertaining to the "merits" of the case.  There is no rule whatsoever pertaining to review of judicial misconduct OUTSIDE OF THE JUDGE'S AUTHORITY - where the judge may not even reach the merits.

Such a conspicuous gap in the rules does not seem accidental since actions of judges without jurisdiction, by judges' own judicially-created rules of immunity, may be outside of the scope of immunity and may subject judges to lawsuits for damages.

Thus, judges judging judges created rules that would preclude imposing discipline on judges in a way that would allow lawsuits for damages against judges.

Which begs, as a solution, removal of judicial discipline from the hands of the federal judiciary and revamp of the rules, including statutory rules, of judicial discipline for federal judges.

As to judicial misconduct on the merits - where would an injured party get a remedy for judicial misconduct aimed at the merits of the case? 

Appeals?

I analyzed several civil rights appeals decided in the most recent years by the 2nd Circuit and found a frightening tendency of how decisions on those appeals (all dismissals) were made.

They were all referred to 3-judge panels, where the majority of judges in those panels 75 to 80 years old, and who consistently made "non-precedential summary orders" instead of providing to me or my husband the required full appellate review de novo as of right.

All appeals were denied, with the exception of one remand, but that was because of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the issue of Younger abstention made during the pendency of the appeal - and that case made to the "precedential track" and all the way through to the U.S. Supreme Court likely because it was not a civil rights case, but a case involving business interests, a corporation.

Thus, egregious misconduct in civil rights cases are simply not recognized by the elderly "senior status" judges of the 2nd Circuit in their "non-precedential summary orders", while  civil rights Appellants have to pay the same filing fees and follow the same or more rigorous rules to perfect their appeals.

Actually,  civil rights appellants are given less time by the Local Rules of the 2nd Circuit, and based on the basis of the lower court's decision - so the 2nd Circuit prejudges cases and sides with the lower courts before it even looks at the case (if the elderly judges ever do that, which is doubtful from reading the "summary orders").

Thus, the 2nd Circuit discriminates incoming appeals into the "worthy", and getting full analysis and precedential status and the "unworthy", like these pesky civil rights cases, which are classified and prejudged before they are reviewed as unworthy of full review that the statutory law requires the appellate federal courts to provide and assigned to the "fast and sloppy track" of the "non-precedential summary orders".

The interesting phenomenon is that (I've read in a recent law review) there was a 15-fold (15 times!) increase in filings of civil rights actions from 1999 to 2007.

Yet, there was a significant DEcrease from 2009 to date.

Since I am researching the issue closely, I have come across and have read numerous dismissals of civil rights cases left and right with the disrespectful and insulting language to the civil rights litigants and their lawyers that the actions "fail to state a claim" because they are "convoluted", "incomprehensible", "harassing", "frivolous".

• Abundance of incoherent judicially created doctrine restricting, without authority, jurisdiction of federal court for purposes of civil rights action, 
• increasing frequency of sanctions by federal courts against civil rights litigants and their attorneys, imposed under 28 U.S.C. 1927, the so-called "inherent power of the court" and attorney fees that civil rights litigants, who are already victims of governmental misconduct, are increasingly ordered to pay to attorneys of the governmental violators of civil rights pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1988, combined with 
• the "fast and sloppy track" that the civil rights appeal are classified into in federal appellate court and that 
• such appeals are habitually reviewed by "non-precedential summary orders" by "senior status" judges who are between 75 and 80 years old, 

tell me that there exists in federal court a deliberate policy of chilling civil rights litigation.
And of course, such a policy is unconstitutional, but it "evades review" since the U.S. Supreme Court pays less attention to petitions for writs of certiorari from "non-precedential summary orders" than from fully analyzed precedential decisions on appeals of federal appellate circuit courts.

If such a policy evades review by the U.S. Supreme Court, it should catch attention of the legislators, and the above described practices of federal courts must be legislatively prohibited.