The court has the final say.

Since the dawn of the Judicial Qualifications Commission, Florida Supreme Court justices, whose duty it is to have the final say after giving "great weight" to the group's recommendations, have wrestled with how to carry out discipline of judges consistently and fairly.

In the very first case to come before the JQC in 1970, that was apparent. A judge had a falling out with his colleagues about how to run the courts in their circuit, and he took his concerns to the local newspaper. Fellow judges had complained he created chaos in the system and publicly embarrassed them. The JQC wanted the judge in question to submit to a psychological exam, hut he refused.

The Supreme Court ordered that the recommendation of the JQC be followed a public reprimand for "failing to follow recognized methods of proposing changes in judicial procedure."

But Justice Richard Ervin disagreed, saying the judge had the free speech right to publicly explain his side of the dispute.

"Here, the commission in its very first inquiry essayed to venture into a very nebulous and debatable situation involving the psychological motivation of a judge, and in the process equated his right to speak out on the subject of judicial reform as the prime example of his unbecoming conduct and his bad behavior," Justice Ervin wrote in his dissent.

"By so venturing, we have at our threshold for the first review of findings of the commission, issues that set at stake the most fundamental concepts of a free democratic society."

There was no showing that the judge was "corrupt, senile or insane," but only that he "rocked the boat and annoyed his fellow judges," Justice, Ervin wrote.

In a 1996 case, a judge falsified records by backdating pleas in DUI cases. It had the dual effect of not showing up on the clerk's record as part of the judge's pending caseload, but also allowed drivers to stay behind the wheel when their licenses were supposed to have been revoked for six months.

The JQC and the majority of justices agreed the judge should be removed from office because "knowing and repeated acts of falsifying public records strike at the very heart of judicial integrity."

But Justice Leander Shaw dissented, and Justice Harry Lee Anstead concurred: "Her openness convinces me that she was oblivious to the seriousness of her impropriety....It seems inequitable to remove [this judge] when [another judge] received a public reprimand for lying in open court, falsifying records and convicting DUI...