FAQ: Who has statewide employee codes of conduct?

August 2, 2023

by Bill Raftery

While states differ in terms of how they manage their judiciary’s human resources functions, many have statewide employee codes of conduct. Roughly half of states and territories have copies of their codes online. While they are not identical, some patterns emerge:

1. Document - the code of conduct is often a standalone document but may be integrated into another publication. One example of a combined document is Idaho’s Judicial Branch Employee Policy Manual, which includes a section entitled Code of Conduct for Employees of the Judicial Branch.
2. Title - because some of these documents are standalone versus consolidated, the terms used to describe them vary. The most common are “code of conduct,” “rules of conduct” and “standards of conduct;” however, several do integrate this into “ethics.”
3. Common terms - there is an emphasis on the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary in general and of staff in particular. Virginia’s Rules of Conduct for Judicial System Employees puts it this way: “Employees of the Judicial System should personally observe high standards of conduct so that the integrity and independence of this separate branch of government are preserved and the duties performed reflect a devotion to serving the public.”
4. Applicability - whereas in the past, non-judge employees were simply subjected to the state’s code of judicial conduct, these more modern codes are specific to employees. For example, in 2007 Karl Thoennes' ICM Fellows paper found in many states the ethics code or code of conduct was adopted for judicial officers and directly or indirectly made applicable to court staff. Today there is often a separate code that applies to court employees. This trend was further examined in 2010 with Amy McDowell’s Courthouse Ethics: Effective Court Administration Codes of Ethics and through the development by the National Association for Court Management’s (NACM) Model Code of Conduct for Court Professionals.

NACM keeps a catalog of such codes that also includes local codes (e.g., Code of Conduct for Non-Judicial Employees of [Florida’s] Seventh Judicial Circuit) or employee-specific such as codes of conduct for court interpreters. Sample statewide or jurisdiction-wide court employee codes of conduct follow.

Do you have a statewide code of conduct for court employees or local ones? Share your experiences with us. For more information, contact Knowledge@ncsc.org or call 800-616-6164. Follow the National Center for State Courts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.