Litigation

Task Force to Study MI Judicial Selection

By Peter Hardin

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will serve as honorary chairwoman for a task force set up to examine the way Michigan selects state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals judges, and to propose reforms.

Michigan Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly and Senior Judge James Ryan of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will head the task force. It was named in the aftermath of a campaign slugfest this year for two seats on the state Supreme Court.

Justice Kelly said  the 2010 elections  included “vitriolic advertising,” according to an Associated Press article.

“Millions of dollars have been spent to portray judicial candidates as unfit for office,” Crain’s Detroit Business quoted Justice Kelly as saying. “It leads to a public perception that the justice system is neither effective nor impartial. We must find improvements to the way we choose our appellate judges.” The Crain’s article listed the members of the 24-person task force.

Dan Pero, head of the American Justice Partnership, slammed the task force as an assault on judicial election by “liberal elites who think they should be the ones to decide who sits on the bench,” a Detroit Free Press article reported. Pero served as chief of staff to then-Gov. John Engler.

An editorial in the Detroit Free Press, on the other hand, was headlined, “Task force good first step to court reform,” and it explained its reasoning this way:

“Elections for the state Supreme Court have become multimillion-dollar operations bankrolled by anonymous groups. More than half the $9 million spent in this year’s campaign for two seats on the state’s highest court was provided by organizations that have no legal obligation to disclose the identity of their donors, much less any financial interest those donors have in controversies before the courts. As retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor observed during a visit to Detroit last spring, the proliferation of such undisclosed contributions perpetuates the public’s perception that ostensibly impartial judges are mere ‘politicians in black robes.’”

Also hopeful was an editorial in the Livingston Daily, headlined “Dysfunctional courts need fresh order.”

The Democratic Party nominated Justice Kelly, and Judge Ryan was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican. Justice O’Connor, a champion for eliminating state judicial elections (see Gavel Grab), was appointed by Reagan.

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