Rehnquist Calls for Limiting Public Disclosure of Judges’ Financial Information; Woolf, Paul, Goldschmid, and Mills Also Speak at Annual Meeting

Addressing the Institute on the first day of the 2000 Annual Meeting in May, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suggested the need for Congress to consider amendments to the Ethics in Government Act that will "balance the legitimate needs for public disclosure of judges’ financial holdings with the judges’ need for security." Other speakers at the 77th Annual Meeting included The Right Honourable Lord Woolf of Barnes, Master of the Rolls of the Royal Courts of Justice; American Bar Association President William G. Paul; Harvey J. Goldschmid of Columbia University, former General Counsel of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Deputy Chief Reporter for the ALI’s Corporate Governance Project; and Cheryl D. Mills, former Deputy Counsel to the President of the United States.

Noting that the Ethics in Government Act requires federal judges to file financial reports each year, Chief Justice Rehnquist observed that for all its public benefits, the Act also "presents judges with troubling security issues." When, pursuant to the Act, a news organization recently requested copies of all Article III and federal magistrate judges’ financial disclosure reports for the purpose of putting them on its Internet Web site, he said, the Judicial Conference’s Financial Disclosure Committee at first denied the request and withheld the reports from disclosure, citing security reasons, notably that "there would no longer be a means to filter information on those reports that could endanger the individual judge."

The Chief Justice reported that because he and a large majority of the members of the Judicial Conference believed the language of the Act did not support the Financial Disclosure Committee’s willingness to withhold financial disclosure reports in their entirety, the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference has now undertaken instead to prepare a set of regulations that will fully conform to the current statute. These regulations, he explained, "are being designed to facilitate redacting the sensitive information in the reports to avoid an en masse production that, in the words of the statute, could endanger the judges." He added that the Judicial Conference may also propose amendments to the Act’s filing requirements so as to decrease security risks to the federal judges.

In a graceful and witty address at the Annual Dinner on May 17, Lord Woolf, who has since become Lord Chief Justice, hailed the Institute as "an extraordinary institution" that performs "a unique role" not "performed in the same way by any comparable institution," and declared that the Restatements are "the first source to which a foreign lawyer turns if he wants to know about United States law." "The great achievement" of the Restatements, Lord Woolf asserted, is that "they provide a code, but they do not provide it in the form of legislation which is inflexible and rigid. They provide it in a form which allows it to develop and therefore does not stultify the strength and the greatness of the common law." The Restatements "carry conviction," he added, "because of the consultative process which takes place in their production, the sort of discussions that I have been able to witness while I have been here."

Lord Woolf described how his own "very conservative country is going through a period of immense constitutional and legal change," including "a movement in the United Kingdom from a unified state to a federal state"; the presence, for the first time, of an elected mayor of all of London; the expulsion of hereditary peers from the House of Lords; important civil-justice reforms; the implementing of the European Convention of "part of our domestic law"; and "more fundamental changes as a result of the human-rights legislation." Contending that the legal systems of our two nations must become global and that we must "continue to learn from each other," he concluded that perhaps the most important thing he would take away with him when he returned to England would be the fact that the Institute, rather than taking an insular view of the law, is broadly looking at the impact its reforms will have on jurisdictions outside the United States.

Speaking at the opening session, Mr. Paul described the theme for his ABA presidency as "Lawyers Serving Society in the New Millennium," and explained that during his term the ABA has particularly emphasized "independence of the judiciary"; "access to justice, with special emphasis on support of the Legal Services Corporation"; and "improvements to the justice system." He noted that work presently in progress included that of the Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice, chaired by ALI Council member Sherwin P. Simmons, which has now taken the position that "lawyers should be permitted to share fees and join with nonlawyer professionals in a practice that delivers both legal and nonlegal professional services." Other projects, he said, include multijurisdictional practice; Ethics 2000, a revision of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct; work on the laws of immigration and on the ways in which the Immigration and Naturalization Service implements and executes those laws; a proposal for a moratorium on the death penalty; and various "rule-of-law initiatives around the world." He added that special presidential initiatives this year include increasing "racial and ethnic diversity at all levels of the legal profession"; utilizing "new tools of technology … in the delivery of legal services, in addition to just support in the law office"; and vastly increasing the ABA’s focus and the resources it devotes to the international aspects of the work of the legal profession and of the ABA. Mr. Paul concluded with a list of five long-term goals for the future of the profession: (1) "that our core values never change"; (2) to achieve, within the profession, "the richness and vibrancy of racial and ethnic diversity"; (3) "to use the technologies of communication to grow, develop, and change, where change is needed, in the way that we deliver legal services to our clients so that more are served and unmet legal needs are met"; (4) "to see the blessing of the rule of law available to peoples all over the world" with the aid of American lawyers; and (5) "to see the American legal profession valued, respected, and revered by the American people as it ought to be."

Representing the new class of life members honored at the luncheon on May 16, Professor Goldschmid began by offering some comparisons between 1975, when he became a member, and the present: (1) in 1975, the gross domestic product, in constant dollars, was $1.6 trillion; now it is about $8 trillion; (2) at the end of 1975, the Dow Jones average closed at 852; on May 15, 2000, it closed at 10,807; (3) in 1975, there were about 30 million shareholders in the U.S.; today there are about 80 million; and (4) in the mid-1970s, approximately 15 or 20 million shares turned over on the New York Stock Exchange per day; today, daily trading volume on the Exchange of a billion shares is common, and the CEO of the Exchange expects the number to increase to three or five billion in the near future. He then went on to describe in detail three of the "most prominent" SEC initiatives during his time at the Commission in 1998 and 1999: the earnings-management, the audit-committee, and the selective-disclosure initiatives. Regarding the first two initiatives, he emphasized how "the analytical power and sturdy policy judgments" that the Institute made during the Corporate Governance Project of the 1980s and early 1990s "have become the source material for what is taken as common wisdom today." He recounted how the ALI’s "excellent work" made it "much easier to put various things into effect in 1999 and 2000." "The ability of the Institute to sit back, to judge, to think, to recommend in a dispassionate, thoughtful way," he said, "has large impact on our society over any given period of time."

Professor Goldschmid concluded by paying tribute to the Institute’s late Director, Herbert Wechsler, his teacher at Columbia and treasured friend, who said that the most important lesson that Judge Holmes taught through the years was that "[t]hose of us to whom it is not given to ‘live greatly in the law’ are surely called upon to fail in the attempt." Professor Wechsler, he declared, "lived greatly in the law" and his words "wisely instruct all the rest of us … to keep making large demands on ourselves and to keep on trying to live greatly."

At the luncheon on May 17, Ms. Mills, who is now Senior Vice President for Corporate Policy and Public Programming at Oxygen Media in New York City, reflected on her years in the White House and considered whether her time devoted to public service was indeed worthwhile. Her nearly seven years in the Counsel’s Office, she noted, included such difficult challenges as the investigation of the FBI siege at the Branch Davidian compound, serious allegations against five Cabinet members, the death of a colleague and mentor whom she admired and respected tremendously, being called to testify before the Grand Jury "on more than several occasions," and, most significantly, the need to defend before the Senate "the most powerful client I will ever have" in only the second impeachment trial of a President in the nation’s history. Deploring the "charged atmosphere in which many government officials now serve," she was particularly critical of the Office of Special Counsel’s efforts to "pierce the traditional attorney-client privilege" by means of gratuitous subpoenas compelling her and other members of the White House legal staff to testify before the Grand Jury.

Despite the travails of public service, Ms. Mills nevertheless concluded that its satisfactions were greater, including helping to bring about "the increasing diversity and qualification of the judiciary through the President’s appointments," "the reaffirmation of affirmative-action measures for women and people of color," "traveling through Africa and meeting with Nelson Mandela," and working with the White House’s "extraordinarily skilled and interesting staff" and the passionate, caring, and committed President and First Lady. In contrast to her "gloomier moments" in which she found herself doubting "whether public service does or should mean loving your country enough to embrace all of the challenges it brings today," Ms. Mills made it clear that she was ultimately persuaded by the advice of her mentor, the President, that she not "give in" but instead keep her eye on "a prize which was bigger than the smallness of the spirits or the acts of any single individual."

The complete texts of the talks delivered at this year’s Annual Meeting will appear in the Proceedings, as well as in a separate volume of Remarks and Addresses that will be available later this year.