Litigation

Will Iowa Judges Face Political Votes this Fall?

By Peter Hardin

The Iowa Supreme Court’s decision last year legalizing same-sex marriage has some judges bracing for political attacks in retention elections this year.

Judge Robert Hanson, who wrote the initial opinion that the high court upheld, told the Des Moines Register, “I don’t know exactly where they will come from or what they’ll amount to.” He added, “The cynic in me ? the realist in me ? suspects that people have long memories, and won’t forget these things.”

Last-minute bids to unseat judges, inspired by the same-sex marriage ruling, are expected. If they occur, they potentially will politicize the up-or-down votes on jurists whose job is to deliver impartial justice. Opponents of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, contend that Iowa Supreme Court justices acted politically when they issued the controversial ruling.

A close reader of the Iowa newspaper could learn a great deal about judicial selection from this and two other recently published pieces:

• In one article, Drake University political scientist Rachel Paine Caufield discusses what she sees as the need in Iowa’s merit-based selection system for more credible and non-partisan information about judges who are up for retention votes. Regarding political attacks on judges, she said, “One of the reasons these attacks can be successful, is that good information about judges is not easily available.”
• An article in the newspaper’s “juice” blog broadly describes how Iowa’s judicial selection system works, and what its proponents, and critics, say about it.

You can learn more about Iowa’s retention elections and the volatility of the same-sex marriage decision in Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 20, 2010 (boomark / email).