Alaska judges will soon be bound by tighter ethics rules under a rewrite of court standards; Alaska Beacon, January 8, 2026

 JAMES BROOKS, Alaska Beacon ; Alaska judges will soon be bound by tighter ethics rules under a rewrite of court standards

"The Alaska Court System is preparing to finalize new ethics guidelines that will determine whether state judges must opt out from hearing cases due to personal conflicts.

An extensive new ethics code, modeled on a national standard drafted by the American Bar Association, is open for public comment through Jan. 23. 

The changes, which stretch for dozens of dense, jargon-filled pages, prescribe things like what a judge can ethically do during an election, how to respond if someone’s life might be endangered by secrecy and even what happens if an attorney is drunk in the courtroom...

Alaska’s existing code of ethics dates to 1998 and was based on a model released in 1990 by the American Bar Association.

The association released a new model code in 2007, but Alaska didn’t adopt it. In 2018, as the court system dealt with a rising number of Alaskans representing themselves in court, judges were struggling with what they could and couldn’t do to help, Winfree said."