Legal News

A Contrarian View in the Judicial-Election Debate

By Dan Slater

A couple weeks back, we read with great interest, but didn’t blog, a WSJ opinion piece, entitled “Justice for Sale,” by James Sample, a lawyer with NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice. Sample railed against the alleged judicial corruption that results from holding elections for state judges. As possible reforms, Sample threw out options such as commission-based appointment systems, publicly financed campaigns, or more rigorous recusal rules. “Without such measures,” he wrote, “stories like ‘The Appeal’” — the most recent fiction by John Grisham, in which a chemical company buys a favorable legal ruling by funding the election of the judge who makes it — “will fill non-fiction shelves.”

Today, the WSJ editorial board mixes it up a bit on the issue of judicial elections, focusing in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. After a recent election for a spot on Wisconsin’s high court, Louis Butler, a Democrat appointed by Governor Jim Doyle to fill a vacancy in 2004, was replaced by Michael Gabelman, resulting in a likely shift to a 4-3 conservative majoriy. The WSJ editorial board editorializes thusly:

Closely watched nationally, the election became a proxy war between third parties, with business interests lining up behind Mr. Gableman and trial lawyers and organized labor plumping for Mr. Butler. The hotly contested race supposedly shows the need for “merit selection” or public financing in judicial elections. But both sides leveraged roughly the same amount of money, and voters had a choice of two distinct legal philosophies. . . . The Wisconsin result should reverberate through the 39 states that elect some or all of their appellate-level judges. Mr. Butler is the first incumbent justice to be ousted in more than four decades there. A seat on the bench is not a sinecure, and justices who abuse or contort the law must sometimes answer for their actions.

LB’ers, what say you? Do we need reform in the world of judicial elections, as people like Doyle and Grisham argue, or should we should we let the system of judicial elections alone?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 31, 1969 (boomark / email).