I continue to marvel at how the Pennsylvania courts always get ensnared in scandal. My law school commencement speaker--ex-Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane--has already been convicted of illegally leaking secret grand jury material to reporters, and I graduated in 2013. Several Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices who I covered when working for The Legal Intelligencer have had to resign due to scandal or have faced judicial discipline or been convicted of crimes.
The Legal's P.J. D'Annunzio has a piece analyzing why Pennsylvania judges keep on getting in trouble. His answer: "a number of overarching factors contribute to Pennsylvania's judicial woes, from the election of judges to political cronyism, allowed to fester by a judicial disciplinary system that remains ineffective despite reform efforts." For example, one law school professor says that part of the problem is that the Judicial Conduct Board is not independent from the system it is supposed to regulate and discipline.
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