Over at Volokh, Prawfsblawg, and California Appellate Report, they're discussing People v. Zachary, from the California Court of Appeal. (Note: it's court of "Appeal" not "Appeals.") The trial court judge referred to the appellate court judges as kangaroos on the kangaroo court. The appellate court responded with some pointed criticism of the trial judge and said that he had violated the canons of judicial ethics.
There is a perennial debate about the limits of free speech in the context of litigation. I often find myself arguing for modest restraints on the mode of offering up criticism. The daily grind of litigation doesn't permit certain forms of aggressive, corrosive rhetoric. Legislators have similar "rules of engagement" that apply to daily debate. For that matter, so do referees and sports players. You're allowed certain forms of criticism, certain expressions, certain amounts of emotion, but not others. The key to making this work is that the party in power -- the party who gets to blow the whistle -- has to use some restraint in exercising that power. It seems to me that the California Court of Appeal was a little too sharp in how it responded here. There's a fine line between condemning abusive rhetoric and adopting abusive rhetoric of one's own.
(By the way, we recently had a case out of, I believe, Indiana, where the appellate lawyer included a footnote stating that the lower court had been result-oriented. The lawyer attempted to apologize and re-file the brief but was disciplied nonetheless. Can anyone remember the name of that case?)