Legal News

Tulane Law Prof Examines Whether Justices are for Sale

By Peter Lattman

In the wake of the conflict-of-interest imbroglio involving the elected justices on the West Virginia Supreme Court, the NYT’s Adam Liptak has a column today about judges and campaign contributions. It looks at a soon-to-be published study in the Tulane Law Review by Green Wave law professor Vernon Valentin Palmer. The conclusion is simple: If a judge has taken money from a litigant or a lawyer, the judge has no business ruling on that person’s case.

He and an econ professor at neighboring Loyola U. examined rulings by the Louisiana Supremes. Their conclusions: In nearly half of the cases heard by the court over a 14-year period ended in 2006, a litigant or lawyer had contributed to at least one justice. On average, justices voted in favor of their contributors 65 percent of the time, and two of the justices did so 80 percent of the time. Liptak also notes a similar study of the Ohio Supremes that he and the Times initiated in this story from 2006.

Liptak cites arguments that dismiss such findings as not showing much except for the fact that “contributors support judges whose legal philosophies they find congenial and, incidentally, sometimes benefit when their judges apply those philosophies in a principled and consistent way that just happens to benefit them.”

The Tulane study doesn’t call for an end to judicial elections or fundraising but instead focuses on the narrow proposal that judges recuse themselves from cases where litigants have contributed to their campagins. Indeed, Liptak cites the Supremes opinion from earlier in the month which, though it didn’t strike down the way New York elects its judges, did raise some questions about the process. Justices Kennedy and Breyer wrote that fundraising for judicial might be at odds “with the perception and the reality of judicial independence and judicial excellence.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).