Litigation

JAS Partner Condemns ?Jukebox Justice?

By Peter Hardin

There’s a stinging new condemnation of special interest spending on judicial elections, penned by a partner of Justice at Stake.

Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development, examines judicial election spending that he says can lead to perceptions of “jukebox justice.” He does this in an essay praising recusal reform recently announced in New York State .

Kolb sets the scene. “The sad truth is that far too often justice is for sale in American courts, and the public barely expresses outrage,” he writes in his Huffington Post commentary.

He goes on to describe practices that amount to a “steadily increasing judicial arms race” in many states where judges are elected, and the questions raised about impartial justice when elected judges take campaign money from parties who will appear before them in court.

Kolb, however, is not without hope. He alludes to the reform announced by Chief New York Judge Jonathan Lippman (see Gavel Grab for background), and points to it as the kind of reform that can dramatically improve public trust in our courts:

“If our state courts are seen as dispensing ‘jukebox justice,’ then all Americans lose: our judges will have become just one more commodity for sale, and our system of justice and its principles of fairness, objectivity, and independence will be lost. What happened in New York sends a message to the rest of the nation, and other state courts should follow Judge Lippman’s splendid example.”

Kolb explains also explains the origins of the phrase in the headline of his piece, “Jukebox Justice: American Judges for Sale.” It came from an (unnamed) prominent Texas plaintiff’s attorney who was serving on a Committee panel on judicial selection reform some years ago. The CED was preparing to publish a report on that topic.

Just before publication of the report, the attorney — who supported reform of the existing system — confided that “in Texas, we’ve got ‘jukebox justice’. You put your quarter in the jukebox, and your judge sings your tune.”

On the eve of release of the Committee’s report, the same lawyer disclosed he had pumped $200,000 of personal donations into judicial campaigns during that state’s election cycle.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).