By Manny Marotta, FTC law clerk

Fix the Court has discovered a troubling gap of oversight within the Alaska Supreme Court: ethics complaints against magistrate judges are screened not by an independent body but by the very judges who oversee and work closely with them.

A recent public account from an Alaska attorney has highlighted that complaints against magistrate judges cannot be filed directly with the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is independent of the courts and is composed of a combination of judges, attorneys and members of the public. Instead, such complaints must be submitted to a local presiding or supervising superior court judge.

Our review of Alaska’s current and proposed Code of Judicial Conduct confirms that magistrate judges are the only judicial officers in the state whose alleged misconduct is filtered through an internal chain of command rather than evaluated by an independent commission.

(As in the federal system, Alaskan magistrates are overseen by judges higher up the chain and are typically tasked with handling the early stages of a case, like issuing warrants and conducting preliminary hearings, though they can also preside over small claims and certain misdemeanors.)

The proposed updates to the code, which are open for public comment until Jan. 23, 2026, would continue this framework instead of correcting it. (The revisions are mostly cosmetic, ensuring that Alaska’s code tracks with the 2007 revisions to the ABA’s model code, though there are some new sections on workplace conduct and recusal.) That means magistrate judges would remain uniquely shielded from independent oversight, even though they routinely make consequential decisions that affect Alaskans’ lives.

Fix the Court urges the Alaska Supreme Court to close this accountability loophole by granting the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct explicit authority to accept and investigate complaints against magistrate judges, just as it does for other judicial officers.

The public deserves a process that is transparent, independent and free from the conflicts inherent in review by peers.

Fix the Court also encourages Alaskans to submit comments to the Court at RuleComments@akcourts.gov before the Jan. 23 deadline to make clear that meaningful oversight requires independence.