A federal judge was accused of an extramarital affair involving a high-ranking law enforcement officer, with allegations including blackmail risk, attendance at openly partisan events, and lying to investigators. The Eleventh Circuit and the Judicial Conference concealed the judge’s identity, using anonymized reporting that referred only to “Subject Judge” and avoided naming the district or using gendered identifiers. Sanctions were adjusted to allow vague apology wording so the letters could not be used against the judge. After publication, the identity was inferred with high confidence from details such as nonstandard clerk hiring patterns. Bloomberg Law News later confirmed the judge’s identity as Judge Eleanor Ross, raising concerns about how federal courts are unprepared for AI-driven identification from partial information.
"Because despite the severity of the allegations - an affair that raised serious blackmail risks, attending openly partisan events, and lying to investigators when caught - the Eleventh Circuit and the Judicial Conference both concealed the judge's identity. They even adjusted the very minor sanction to allow the judge "to word the letters of apology vaguely so as to ensure that a letter could not be 'used against [the Subject Judge] in some way.'""
"The Eleventh Circuit thought it had been so clever in anonymizing its report. The reports don't include a name or a district, and refer only to "Subject Judge" throughout. The reports even assiduously avoid identifying the judge by gender, proving that even conservative judges can figure out how pronouns work with minimal effort. And yet the reports failed to obscure a number of details that made working out the judge's identity possible."
"Within 45 minutes of publishing our article, we worked out with a very high degree of confidence that it was Judge Eleanor Ross of the Northern District of Georgia. That said, we didn't have a source with first-hand knowledge to confirm the story. While we made coy allusions, we were not prepared to publish this without more. Bloomberg Law News has just confirmed with a source directly familiar with the investigation that it is Judge Ross."
"As soon as I read the reports, I zeroed in on a footnote revealing that the district judge involved hired clerks for two-year staggered terms. That's not the norm and narrowed down the p"
Read at Above the Law
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]