Is Facebook Friendship Legal?

Judges and lawyers in Florida can no longer be Facebook friends.

In a recent opinion, the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee decided it was time to set limits on judicial behavior online. When judges “friend” lawyers who may appear before them, the committee said, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest, since it “reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer ‘friends’ are in a special position to influence the judge.”

In practice, of course, actual friends and Facebook friends can be as different as leather and pleather, and the committee did recognize that online friends were not the same as friends in the traditional sense. A minority of the panel would have allowed Facebook friendship, which it characterized as more like “a contact or acquaintance” without conveying the notion of “feelings of affection or personal regard.”

But the committee’s majority concluded that the possibility of the appearance of impropriety required that they recommend against friending, said Judge T. Michael Jones of the First Judicial Circuit Court, a committee member. He emphasized that the committee’s role was advisory, and that the opinion “does not have the force of a Supreme Court opinion” in Florida.

The decision was issued last month, and was first reported Tuesday by the Legal Profession Blog.

via John Schwartz www.nytimes.com

This is lunacy. Let’s see, how about judges and lawyers can’t favorite each others’ phone numbers on their iPhones. And they can’t wave to each other in the street.