The new committee to deal with complaints against judges following the Sheedy affair should contain some non-lawyers, according to the Law Society.
The Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hamilton, recently announced the setting up of a six-member judicial committee to establish a system for handling complaints about judges.
In an article in the current issue of the Law Society Gazette, the society's director-general, Mr Ken Murphy, said "transparency and accountability" were spirits of our age.
"The problem is that transparency and, in particular, accountability, are difficult to reconcile fully with the role of judges given that it is a cornerstone of a free democratic society that the judiciary be completely independent in its judicial function."
However, he added that it was clear that not everything done by a judge was an exercise of a judicial function.
"Legal practitioners have had to face, from time to time over the years, problems of judicial conduct for which they have had no effective remedy. Problems of judicial rudeness, irascibility, inefficiency, favouritism or the making of inappropriate remarks, for example, of a racist or sexist nature from the bench can rarely in themselves be appealed to a higher court."
He said the subject was discussed by the Law Society Council, in the context of the Denham Working Group, and two things emerged.
One was that representatives of the Law Society and the Bar Council should be on any committee to review the conduct of judges. The other was that it should have non-lawyer members, "both to guarantee public confidence in it and because of the special value of their perspective from outside of the legal system".