Legal News

Justice O?Connor on Judicial Elections: She?s Not a Fan

By Ashby Jones

Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court back in 2006. But we’ve arguably managed to work her into the LB more since her retirement than we might have had she stayed on the bench. Click here for a recent post on an interview with Justice O’Connor by the WSJ’s Jess Bravin, which includes the litany of activities that have kept the justice so busy.

And yet today we’ve found another reason to feature her on the Law Blog.

O’Connor on Monday spoke to a group at the Seattle University School of Law, in which she ventured into a hot-button area: whether state judges should be elected. Click here for the story, from the Seattle Times.

The seeming short answer: no. According to the Seattle Times, O’Connor believes Washington and other states need to completely overhaul the way that state and local judges are selected for the bench. Because lower-level judges are elected they are not immune from potentially being swayed by campaign contributions, said O’Connor on Monday. In Washington state, as in about two dozen others, judicial positions from state Supreme Court justice to municipal judge are elected positions.

O’Connor said the threat to judicial independence comes largely from corporations, attorneys and other interest groups that donate to campaigns with the hope of obtaining favorable rulings from the judge after the election.

The conference at Seattle U. started with a nearly two-hour discussion centered on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Caperton v. Massey Coal, which held that elected judges must step aside when large campaign contributions by interested parties create appearance of bias.

O’Connor struck a historical note on Monday, stating that the nation’s founders believed it crucially important that federal judges have the freedom to make unpopular decisions without worrying about poll numbers. It was only after President Jackson’s election in 1828 that he persuaded states to begin adopting elections for judges, she said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).