CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A law professor who studies judicial ethics told cleveland.com Friday afternoon that Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O'Neill's Facebook post on his sexual history pushes the ethical boundaries of what a judge can and should say while he or she is in on the bench.

But the post that garnered national attention is just the latest chapter in a story over whether O'Neill should stay on the bench while he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for Ohio governor. Questions about judicial ethics and the ability to remain impartial while campaigning were raised by fellow politicians and editorial boards across the state.

Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University, said the statement, while it may be in poor taste, shows the inherent tension between holding a position that holds certain standards and campaigning for another that demands partisanship.

"He's behaving like an outspoken gubernatorial candidate right now, not a judge," Geyh said.

O'Neill's Friday morning Facebook post had the 70-year-old Chagrin Falls native talking about sexual encounters with 50 women. He also appeared to show how he felt about the recent onslaught of reports of sexual misconduct against entertainers, executives and politicians by saying he was speaking up for "all heterosexual males" and that he was "sooooo disappointed by this national feeding frenzy about sexual indiscretions decades ago."

The post drew an almost instantaneous backlash and prompted O'Neill's campaign manager to resign.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor lambasted the Facebook post in a statement later Friday, saying that "I condemn in no uncertain terms Justice O'Neill's Facebook post. No words can convey my shock. This gross disrespect for women shakes the public's confidence in the integrity of the judiciary."

O'Connor did not say anything about whether O'Neill should resign, and a court spokeswoman did not respond to a follow-up email.

Randall Comer, the president of the Ohio State Bar Association, joined in O'Connor's statement Friday evening and said O'Neill's comments "are reprehensible, demeaning, and erode public confidence in our judicial system."

O'Neill told multiple news outlets Friday that he has no plan to resign his seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.

He also deleted the first post on Friday evening and put up a new one that said, in part, that "as an aside for all you sanctimonious judges who are demanding my resignation, hear this. I was a civil right lawyer actively prosecuting sexual harassment cases on behalf of the Attorney General's Office before Anita Hill and before you were born."

Still, the calls for him to resign from the court, where he has served since 2013, were already loud before Friday's post, as many took issue with O'Neill hearing court cases while also taking the public stances necessary to run for the Democratic nomination for governor.

As a judge, O'Neill is barred by the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct from running from political office. He said when he announced his run in October that to abide by those rules, he said he will not raise contributions and would resign as justice when he officially files his petitions to run.

O'Connor said in a statement in October that the court has no mechanism to force O'Neill to recuse himself from hearing cases while he runs for governor. O'Neill also said he would not hear new cases but will decide on the ones presented before he announced his candidacy.

Asked shortly after the first post went up Friday whether his statements were proper for a sitting justice, O'Neill told cleveland.com that "Justice (Antonin) Scalia said that I have free speech rights. I intend to exercise them through the end of my term."

His term ends at the end of 2018, and he is precluded from running for judge again because of his age.

While many have criticized his post as being in incredibly poor taste, Geyh said the post also goes right up to the line on what is proper for a sitting judge to say in public.

Geyh said he was "a bit on the fence" on how to react to O'Neill's post from a potential misconduct angle. He said nothing in the post seemed to show O'Neill would exhibit an overt bias in the cases he hears -- including those involving criminal charges of sexual misconduct -- but that judges have historically steered clear of making the type of statement O'Neill made Friday.

"There is this extent to which he seems to be almost pandering to a certain demographic who will be impressed by his sexual conquests, which strikes me as tacky, maybe, but doesn't address the issue of his impartiality," Geyh said.

Instead, Geyh said, the statement shows the friction O'Neill has created by both serving as a judge and running for governor. Judges are governed by many rules when they run for office, he said, but the public expects a gubernatorial candidate to show partisanship and partiality during a campaign, Geyh said.

"The biggest takeaway for me is that there is something very uncomfortable seeming about a judge who is simultaneously sitting as judge and running for elected office," Geyh said.

Cleveland.com reporter Seth A. Richardson contributed to this story.