Module 6

Ethics and the human side: conduct, recusal, private life, isolation, error and strain

A judge carries the court’s authority everywhere. Whatever a judge says or does in public or in private can be read as the court speaking, and a breach of judicial standards damages not only the judge but the confidence of the public in justice. For that reason judges accept limits on their lives that most people would find unusual: restrictions on public comment, politics, business, gifts and sometimes friendships. The standards are written in codes of judicial conduct, found in nearly every country and in international form in documents such as the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. This module sets out the values of those codes, the central skill of recognising when to step aside, the limits on private life and social media, how to handle pressure, how to cope with the loneliness and weight of the work, and how to deal with the mistakes every judge eventually makes.

General education on the work of a judge across legal systems, using invented people, courts and cases. It is not legal or career advice. Judicial procedure, codes of conduct, standards of proof and routes to the bench differ between countries and change: check the rules that apply to you with the judicial authority and the profession.