Justice for Sale
How special-interest money threatens the integrity of our courts
BY SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR
Wall Street Journal
Voters generally don't express much interest in the election of judges. This year, as in years past, voter turnout in elections for judges was very low. But judicial elections, which occur in some form in 39 states, are receiving growing attention from those who seek to influence them. In fact, motivated interest groups are pouring money into judicial elections in record amounts. Whether or not they succeed in their attempts to sway the voters, these efforts threaten the integrity of judicial selection and compromise public perception of judicial decisions.
The final four candidates running for open seats on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania raised more than $5.4 million combined in 2007, shattering fund-raising records in Pennsylvania judicial elections. Since 2006, high court campaigns in Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon and Washington also set fund-raising records. Since 2004, nine other states broke records for high court election spending.
Most of this money comes from special interest groups who believe that their contributions can help elect judges likely to rule in a manner favorable to their causes. As interest-group spending rises, public confidence in the judiciary declines. Nine out of 10 Pennsylvanians regard judicial fund raising as evidence that justice is for sale, and many judges agree. According to a nationwide survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Institute, partisan judicial elections decrease public confidence that courts are fair, impartial and operating in the best interest of the American people.
(More here.)
BY SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR
Wall Street Journal
Voters generally don't express much interest in the election of judges. This year, as in years past, voter turnout in elections for judges was very low. But judicial elections, which occur in some form in 39 states, are receiving growing attention from those who seek to influence them. In fact, motivated interest groups are pouring money into judicial elections in record amounts. Whether or not they succeed in their attempts to sway the voters, these efforts threaten the integrity of judicial selection and compromise public perception of judicial decisions.
The final four candidates running for open seats on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania raised more than $5.4 million combined in 2007, shattering fund-raising records in Pennsylvania judicial elections. Since 2006, high court campaigns in Georgia, Kentucky, Oregon and Washington also set fund-raising records. Since 2004, nine other states broke records for high court election spending.
Most of this money comes from special interest groups who believe that their contributions can help elect judges likely to rule in a manner favorable to their causes. As interest-group spending rises, public confidence in the judiciary declines. Nine out of 10 Pennsylvanians regard judicial fund raising as evidence that justice is for sale, and many judges agree. According to a nationwide survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Institute, partisan judicial elections decrease public confidence that courts are fair, impartial and operating in the best interest of the American people.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Justice O'Connor is right!
I have lost my copy, but, while running for re-election, an incumbent Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas stated publicly to a public meeting and the media, and was quoted directly in print media, as saying that the business community had found it cheaper to control the 9 member Supreme Court of Texas than the 31-member Texas Senate. He made no reference to, if he was aware of, the very different roles of the Legislative and Judicail departments, or how damning this was to the public perception and trust of the Court on which he sat, and still sits.
Earlier, when the Democrats rather than the current Republicans controlled all state-wide judicial and non-judicial offices in Texas, a Democratic incumbent I had thought I knew admitted redeivingh $100,000.00 in campaign contributions for re-election from a certain very notorious litigant of ill repute while sitting at a table talking with several members of the bar and one federal judge at the bar association.
Both the Democrats and Republicans have elected and re-elected some notoriously morally and otherwise unqualified justices to our highest civil and criminal courts, even in the face of State Bar, Judicial Qualification
commission, and criminal findings, while some of George W. Bush's good appointees to vacancies lost out in the next primary because most voters in our primary and general elections had no idea who was who in judicial races. Most college students or voters can't identify three sitting Supreme Court justices much less anyone on a Texas appellate court.
I practiced in appellate courts, and sometimes I couldn't get enough solid information about candidates for judicial office at the trial and appellate levels to make an intelligent decision whether or not to trust them to work in a day care center or baby-sit much less on the bench.
Some have proven themselves dishonest out of their own mouths.
I have been dunned repeatedly for campaign contributions by judges and justices before whom I had cases for clients, who had appointed me in cases, and, in at least one case, before whom I was a litigant.
No lawyer practicing in a court, the people best qualified to know, could dare risk stating publicly some of the awful facts I have known about some candidates for election or re-election. In one contested local judicial race, the incumbent's supporters argued to me that they would rather be on his supporter and contributor list if his challenger opponent won than on his oppennt's if her won, which may explain why over 90% of the local attorneys endorsed the incumbent, who lost.
Please don't publish my name. I may have a case in one of these courts.
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