Litigation

On Crime, Punishment, and Judicial Campaigns

By Peter Hardin

Is judicial independence in America “endangered” by big-spending judicial elections?

That’s the warning sounded by DePaul University law professor Andrea Lyon in a Huffington Post commentary that cites as evidence a recent report co-authored by the Justice at Stake Campaign and entitled “?The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2000-2009: Decade of Change.?

Lyon writes that she does public speaking about defending death penalty cases, and she often tells her audiences that the first motion she files in such a case is to continue it “to an uneven numbered year. The last thing I want is for my client’s case — or his life — to become part of a judge’s reelection campaign.”

That’s no joke, she adds, explaining her reasoning this way:

“The general public probably has no idea how much running for election warps the process — that a judicial candidate running for election has to raise money (and increasingly more of it), and has to please the electorate, so we end up with judges running campaigns that sound more like they are running for sheriff than to be a neutral arbiter of the law. This problem has been noted for a long time, but has steadily gotten worse.”

To back up her assertion, she quotes from Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hans Linde:

“[C]rime and punishment, guilt and retribution, remain the paradigm of the judicial morality play [in campaigns]. The effect on elective courts is profound when it is not ludicrous.”

Lyon concludes her essay with this cautionary note: “We need to change how we select judges in this country before judicial independence becomes not only endangered, but extinct.”

The “New Politics” report was co-authored by the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics and Hofstra law professor James Sample. Learn more about it from Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 15, 2010 (boomark / email).