"U.S. courts need to do more to ensure compliance with ethics rules — including rules that preclude a judge from presiding over cases in which he or she has a financial interest, Chief Justice John Roberts says in a year-end report on the federal judiciary.
Roberts was responding, in part, to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal which found that between 2010 and 2018, 131 federal judges ruled in cases involving companies in which they or their families owned shares of stock.
Roberts said that while those amount to "less than three hundredths of one percent of the 2.5 million civil cases filed in the district courts" during that period, the federal judiciary must take the matter seriously.
