We don’t know what conclusions the Council reached, however, nor the factual bases for them. All we know is that among the remedial measures it ordered — and we don’t even know all of those — was a four-month suspension and a formal, public reprimand. (Judge Kent was also transferred from Galveston, where he was the sole resident judge of the Houston/Galveston Division of the Southern District of Texas, to the Houston courthouse.) It’s logically possible that those remedies were ordered for reasons other than that the Council found the complaining party’s allegations to be entirely credible.

We also know that the Council had explicit statutory power to order much harsher remedies than any which have been made public. The four-month suspension could have been considerably longer. The relevant statute also permits such a council to publicly urge a judge to resign, but no such call was made with respect to Judge Kent. And most significantly, in my mind, although the statute expressly authorizes such councils to recommend to the Judicial Conference (which comprises Chief Judges from all of the federal circuits) that it, in turn, recommend the initiation of impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives, there’s no indication that this Council made that recommendation.

Obviously, even though both chambers of Congress passed, and the then-president signed, a statutory set-up that places initial responsibility for investigating and dealing with complaints against the judiciary in the hands of the judiciary itself, the House of Representatives is nevertheless not bound by the decision of the Council not to recommend impeachment. And some critics of the existing system think that federal judges are too protective of their own — and they point, among other examples, to a Ninth Circuit Judicial Council’s treatment of complaints made about U.S. District Judge Manuel Leal in California, which also drew criticism from a 2005 commission headed by Justice Breyer. The complaint made about the handling of the Leal matter, however, was that that council failed to do what the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council investigating the complaint about Judge Kent clearly did do — i.e., take the complaint seriously and conduct a full investigation.

I’m personally acquainted with many of the 19 district and circuit judges who were on the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council in the Kent matter. Cumulatively, among lawyers who’ve practiced before them, it’s a group that enjoys — and has earned — an awful lot of respect. I do not agree that federal judges, as a rule, facilitate each other’s misconduct through cover-ups, nor that they “go easy” on one another. And indeed, I have a hard time imagining that if they accepted in full the substance of the complaining party’s complaints (as reported in the press from her mother), those nineteen judges would have decreed that a mere four-month suspension and public reprimand was an adequate remedy. But such was the vote — without a single written dissent.

I’m not vouching for Judge Kent, nor even defending him. Whatever conduct did justify the Council’s action must have been fairly ugly. But I think it is a serious mistake to accept the complaints here as if they’ve somehow been proven in full — to the satisfaction of the Council, or a jury, or anyone — and I also think it’s important to keep in mind that nineteen federal judges who’ve actually seen the sworn evidence decided not to recommend impeachment.

Its too bad his eccentricities also include sexual assault.