An Illinois judge is removed for allowing a lawyer to wear black robes and preside over cases - while judges in New York allow law clerks preside over court conferences as a matter of course

In a bizarre case, a Cook County (Illinois) judge Valarie Turner was removed from the bench for allowing Rhonda Crawford, the law clerk for another judge, the county's chief Judge Thomas Evans, to preside over two cases wearing a judge's black robe.

Apparently, the court considered that a law clerk presiding over cases in a black robe has gone too far.

Yet, in New York law clerks factually preside over cases, through the so-called incessant "court conferences" where such law clerks do not wear black robes, but they pretty much decide cases for the judge, and appearances in front of such a lawyer is mandatory for parties and their attorneys.

I wonder if judges in New York will be punished at any time for holding conferences where they are not present, through their law clerks, and demanding parties to pay to their attorneys to attend - and often waste time listening to law clerks describing their personal life, like, for example, Judge John Lambert's ruddy-faced law clerk Mark Oursler was regularly doing for years.

Because, whether the presiding law clerk does or does not wear black robes, is not that important - what is important is that he or she does preside over such conferences.

But, as it often happens, what is misconduct in one state - here, Illinois, is quite ok in another, the blessed corrupt state of New York.