Litigation

Business Editorial Hits ?Smear Tactics? in IL Campaign

By Peter Hardin

Business leaders ought to speak out against “smear tactics” used in a business-supported campaign to oust Illinois Justice Thomas Kilbride, says a scathing editorial in Crain’s Chicago Business. It warns that the cornerstones of capitalism are unsafe when “justice is for sale.”

The Illinois Civil Justice League has pushed aggressively to remove Justice Kilbride after his vote siding with a court majority against limits on medical malpractice claims. But to move voters, the group  “slurs him with the baseless charge that he’s soft on crime,” the editorial says. It condemns the attacks:

“The Civil Justice League draws financial support and legitimacy from its ties to business. Those connections make it appear that business condones these scurrilous attacks.”

And the editorial uses scorching language to decry what an ouster of Justice Kilbride would mean, not just for business, but also for our courts:

“[I]f Justice Kilbride loses, the victory will be pyrrhic for business. If such tactics by a single-issue pressure group succeed, every judicial race in Illinois will turn into a judge-buying contest.

“Judges, who should be the most independent government officials, will become handmaidens of the interest groups that fund their campaigns. Justice will be capricious, driven by the interests of political donors, not established principles of law.

“Business depends on an objective, consistent justice system. Courts uphold two cornerstones of capitalism: property rights and contracts. Neither is safe when justice is for sale.”

The retention race that faces Justice Kilbride has drawn national news media coverage, including FactCheck.org scrutiny of the attack advertising (see Gavel Grab), picked up by Newsweek.

A Chicago News Cooperative article published by the New York Times discussed the partisan political side of the battle, saying “what?s at stake is whether Democrats or Republicans get their way in redrawing the state?s legislative and Congressional districts in a critical, once-a-decade act.”

The $3 million-plus retention campaign has become the most expensive of its kind in Illinois history, according to a Galesburg Register-Mail article.

Legal Newsline, which is owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has an article quoting the Illinois Republican Party chairman as saying Justice Kilbride is “masquerading” as a Republican; the Chamber gave $150,000 to the anti-retention drive.

In other coverage, a Bloomington Pantagaph editorial was headlined, “Big money threat to independence of our judiciary.”

You can learn more about the retention election from Gavel Grab or Justice at Stake’s Judicial Elections 2010 page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 01, 2010 (boomark / email).