1. In March we released our “Sorry State of Disclosure” report, which showed that the financial disclosures filed by state court judges and justices in half the U.S. are woefully insufficient, either because they’re nearly impossible to obtain, contain little information useful for oversight or both.

2. Thanks to our report, at least two states are now considering reform: the Michigan Courts in July proposed significant revisions to its judicial disclosure regimen, and we heard in November that the Vermont Courts will consider making disclosure changes early next year. We expect to add more states to this list in 2025.

3. Also based on our report, in October we proposed a set of revisions the ABA’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct that would expand judges’ and justices’ financial disclosure and gift disclosure requirements. The proposal is under consideration by the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.

4. Fix the Court has endorsed more than a dozen proposals in the 118th Congress that would improve transparency and accountability in the federal judiciary, and in June, Gabe was invited to give remarks at the introduction press conference for Rep. Dan Goldman’s (now bicameral) Supreme Court Ethics and Investigations Act, a bill we worked on that would ensure the justices have internal ethics assistance as well as outside staff that can receive information about and examine alleged misconduct.

5. Beyond the Goldman event and as he does every year, Gabe gave presentations about court reform before diverse audiences, including the ABA’s National Conference on Professional Responsibility in May, Seattle University School of Law’s Constitution Day celebration in September and Georgian civil society leaders in D.C. for an ABA Rule of Law Initiative conference in November.

6. Also on the legislative front, the Judiciary Accountability Act was reintroduced in both the House and Senate in September, and a bill that would ban the acceptance of gifts in the judiciary, called the High Court Gift Ban Act, was introduced in the House (July) and Senate (November). We worked extensively on both proposals and look forward to further traction on each — and on free PACER — in the new year.

7. In June, we released a report that catalogued the nearly 350 gifts the justices have received over the last two decades valued at nearly $3 million. Our report was cited by more than 100 media outlets.

8. In July, President Biden and Vice President Harris announced their support for three judicial reforms, two of which Fix the Court has long championed: Supreme Court term limits and an enforceable ethics code. Following the announcement, Gabe was called on by dozens of media outlets to comment and contextualize, including C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and MSNBC’s “Deadline White House.”

9. Though a complaint we filed in February against a Judge Greenberg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims to ensure he wasn’t involved in his wife’s $10,000 donation to Sen. Bob Menendez’s legal defense fund was ultimately dismissed (the correct call), the episode demonstrated the critical role the complaints process can play for keeping lower court judges honest.

10. When a judge attends a privately funded seminar for free, they have to post their participation in two places: their annual disclosures and their court’s seminars page (here’s the Fifth Circuit’s, for example). This past year, behind the scenes, we helped judges in nearly every circuit ensure that their seminar attendance was posted in both locations.

Bonus: On Nov. 12, Fix the Court celebrated a decade in existence, which shows the enduring impact the organization has had in the field of court reform.