Litigation

New Push Launched to Abolish Judicial Elections

By Peter Hardin

A group of prominent judges including retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is planning a nationwide initiative next year to abolish the election of judges.

The Denver-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System announced the project, called the O’Connor Judicial Selection Initiative, to boost state-level efforts to end the practice of electing judges, according to an article in the Blog of Legal Times.

“We think the timing is right” for a national debate on electing judges, the Associated Press quoted Rebecca Love Kourlis, executive director of IAALS and a former Colorado Supreme Court justice, as saying. “Judicial elections have become so expensive, and so unseemly, that this is something ripe for action.” (She is shown with Justice O’Connor in photo.)

IAALS will provide a full-time director for the project, supported by the 10-person staff of the institute. The institute is a partner of Justice at Stake.

“No other nation in the world elects their judges in popular elections,” retired Justice O’Connor said. “We are alone in that respect.” She is known as an ardent advocate against using elections to select state judges.

Justice O’Connor chairs an advisory committee whose members include retired state Justice Kourlis; former American Bar Association President H. Thomas Wells Jr.; and Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court, a board member of Justice at Stake.

According to the Associated Press, the group that will push for abolition of directly-elected judges prefers a system whereby nominating commissions screen judicial candidates, governors appoint judges, and voters decide in elections later whether the judges retain their seats.

Next year, Nevada voters will consider a proposal on the ballot for such an appointment and retention election system. Along with Nevada, Justice O’Connor indicated that only two states, Ohio and Minnesota, may put the issue before voters in the near future.

In an interview with the ABA Journal, Justice O’Connor highlighted problems caused by spending in contested judicial elections. She alluded to both a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that spotlighted the due process issue at stake–Caperton v. Massey–and to a popular novel by John Grisham, “The Appeal,” as illustrative of the problems.

You can learn more about the problems posed by multi-million dollar, special-interest spending in judicial elections from Justice at Stake reports including “The New Politics of Judicial Elections,” available from links at our Web site resources page. Click here for a Justice at Stake page discussing the pros and cons of elections versus judicial appointments, and here to learn more about appointive and retention election systems, often called “merit selection.” You also can learn about the Caperton case from our resource page about it.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 10, 2009 (boomark / email).