NYT editorial: Fair Courts at Risk
The nature of state judicial elections has changed dramatically in recent years, and not for the better.
Expanding their influence-peddling efforts beyond executive offices, like president and governor, and legislative offices, like Congress and state legislatures, well-heeled special interests have become a dominant force in crucial state judicial races.
The alarming result: raucous campaigns with cheesy television attack ads paid for by influence seekers. These trends have grievously compromised judicial neutrality and the appearance of neutrality at the core of the nation’s justice system.
A valuable new report by three nonpartisan legal reform groups — the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics — spotlights the ballooning problem.
Thirty-nine states hold judicial elections. Between 1990 and 1999, campaign fund-raising by State Supreme Court candidates totaled $83.3 million, according to the report, a troubling escalation from the previous decade but less than half the $206 million raised between 2000 and 2009. The collective $6 million raised by top court aspirants at the dawn of the 1990s now seems a mere trickle compared with the $45 million-plus reported during the 2008 election cycle.
(More here.)
Expanding their influence-peddling efforts beyond executive offices, like president and governor, and legislative offices, like Congress and state legislatures, well-heeled special interests have become a dominant force in crucial state judicial races.
The alarming result: raucous campaigns with cheesy television attack ads paid for by influence seekers. These trends have grievously compromised judicial neutrality and the appearance of neutrality at the core of the nation’s justice system.
A valuable new report by three nonpartisan legal reform groups — the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics — spotlights the ballooning problem.
Thirty-nine states hold judicial elections. Between 1990 and 1999, campaign fund-raising by State Supreme Court candidates totaled $83.3 million, according to the report, a troubling escalation from the previous decade but less than half the $206 million raised between 2000 and 2009. The collective $6 million raised by top court aspirants at the dawn of the 1990s now seems a mere trickle compared with the $45 million-plus reported during the 2008 election cycle.
(More here.)
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