Litigation

Election Day Summary: Pressure on Courts ?Is Growing?

Posted on November 03, 2010
A new round of special interest campaign cash, attack advertising and wedge-issue politics broke several spending records in the 2010 judicial elections and took ideological hardball campaigns into new states. The roar of the year’s national politics played out in judicial elections and referenda, and it favored populists and partisans and tilted against incumbents and [...

The $45 Million Hoax Takes In Glenn Beck

Posted on November 02, 2010
In September, the American Justice Partnership–a leading national spender on judicial elections –released a report laying out a grand conspiracy theory: that the Open Society Institute has spent $45 million to end competitive judicial elections in the United States...

Fast Source for Judicial Election Votes

Posted on November 02, 2010
Court-watchers can track in real time tonight the results of elections for state supreme court justices in 29 states through a special webpage set up by the National Center for State Courts. The page will be updated throughout the evening as election results are announced by state officials...

JAS to Wall Street Journal: Editorial Missed Target

Posted on November 02, 2010
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial opposing merit-based selection of judges in Nevada missed the target, Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, suggested in a letter to the newspaper’s editor. The editorial inveighed against “liberal groups who see the state courts as the next frontier for moving political agendas...

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How IA Retention Elections Were Transformed

Posted on November 02, 2010
Even before Iowa’s polling places closed today, analysts were struck by the transformation of once-sedate retention elections for state justices into a raging political battle. The cause? The white-hot gay marriage issue. Three Iowa justices up for retention elections faced an ouster drive funded by outside interest groups, and others who voted with them last [...

?Child Soldier? Sentenced in Military Commission

Posted on November 02, 2010
In the first military commissions trial to be launched during the Obama administration, a former teenage al Qaeda fighter was sentenced by a judge to eight more years in custody. Omar Khadr, 24, who was captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15, received a harsher sentence of 40 years from a military jury but [...

Appeals Judge Elevated to KS High Court

Posted on November 02, 2010
Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Nancy Moritz Caplinger will be elevated to the state Supreme Court, as a result of an appointment by Gov. Mark Parkinson. Judge Caplinger also has served as  an assistant U.S. attorney; was a civil litigator;  and represented the federal government in nonlitigation matters, according to an Associated Press article...

Whither the 2010 Retention Battle Trend?

Posted on November 02, 2010
On Election Day, an investigative news blog has turned a spotlight on a surprising trend of the season: special interest groups working to oust judges in once-quiet retention elections, all over single issue rulings. The twist is that these up-or-down races “were originally designed to limit the influence of special interest money,” reports a Raw [...

Election 2010: Ugly Attack Ads at Finish Line

Posted on November 01, 2010
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl2RQ2oSo2Q New and ugly political attack ads were launched in battleground states including Michigan, Alabama and Alaska as state judicial campaigns approached the finish line. In Michigan, state Democrats used recent disclosures by former Justice Elizabeth Weaver, a Republican, to state that Justice Robert Young had used the N-word and the word “slut” in private [...

NV Voters to Decide on Judicial Appointment

Posted on November 01, 2010
When Nevadans go to the polls on Tuesday, they will cast a vote that may influence the quality of state judges and the public’s faith in the courts. They will vote on a proposal  for a state constitutional amendment to switch to appointment of district judges and state Supreme Court justices, followed by subsequent retention [...

Election 2010: $3.2 Million Spent in AL

Posted on November 01, 2010
Alabama, home for the nation’s costliest state Supreme Court campaigns, continues to make headlines in 2010 for big-spending races. Three seats are open on the state’s highest court, and combined spending has passed $3.2 million, according to a Birmingham News article that also provides a breakdown of the sums...

Business Editorial Hits ?Smear Tactics? in IL Campaign

Posted on November 01, 2010
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...

Impeachment in the Air?

Posted on November 01, 2010
Partisan impeachments of judges are the atomic bomb of American politics–and as a Washington Post article today notes, groups on both sides of the aisle are talking with increasing openness about launching a first strike. By the Post’s count, two conservative and two liberal justices are being discussed for possible impeachment, including Chief Justice Roberts...

Poll: Movement Toward Ouster of an IA Justice

Posted on November 01, 2010
More Iowa voters are moving toward what could be the first ouster of a state Supreme Court justice since the state adopted its merit selection and judicial retention law almost 50 years ago. But the outcome of the contentious retention votes for three justices on Election Day still could not be predicted based on a [...

Supreme Court Lets MN Disclosure Law Stand

Posted on November 01, 2010
Groups challenging a new Minnesota law that requires disclosure of corporate political spending have lost a round at the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court declined to grant an injunction sought by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, according to an Associated Press article...

NY Times: ?An Urgent Need for Judicial Reforms?

Posted on October 30, 2010
The “virus” of big special interest group spending and nasty attack ads in judicial elections has spread to retention (up-or-down) elections this year, a New York Times editorial warns in calling urgently for fundamental reform. The editorial, headlined “Judges and Money,” decries the trend as “especially troubling because retention ballots were supposed to limit politicization [...

Brandenburg: ?Lay off Sandra Day O?Connor?

Posted on October 29, 2010
Detractors of retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor have attacked her in a “drive-by political hit,” but it won’t silence her advocacy for a better way to pick states judges than through elections, Justice at Stake Executive Director Bert Brandenburg writes today in a Slate commentary...

Election 2010: TV Ad Spending Surges

Posted on October 29, 2010
Spending on state Supreme Court campaign TV advertising has surged nationally in the final approach to Election Day, with $3.3 million spent in the week ending Oct. 27, according to a report today by the Justice at Stake Campaign and the Brennan Center for Justice...

Court-Related Measures on Ballots in 10 States

Posted on October 29, 2010
Voters in 10 states  will be asked to decide on a range of court-related ballot measures affecting judicial selection, court structure, and bail qualifications, among other issues, on Election Day. Gavel Grab has reported extensively on a ballot initiative in Nevada for merit-based selection of judges and high-court justices...

FactCheck: Ads ?Mudslinging,? and Distorted

Posted on October 29, 2010
FactCheck.org has branded “Mudfest 2010″  some of the most questionable — and false or misleading — advertising attacks on incumbent state justices launched in this year’s election season. FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan group that examines campaign ads, and it is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania...

AK Justice Faces Challenge by Abortion Foes

Posted on October 29, 2010
Several heated retention (up-or-down) elections for state judges have sparked widespread attention this year, but until now, Gavel Grab had overlooked an effort to oust Alaska Chief Justice Dana Fabe. Chief Justice Fabe has upheld the legality of abortion and has drawn stern opposition from anti-abortion activists, who label her an activist judge, according to [...

Who Decides on Justice Thomas and Recusal?

Posted on October 29, 2010
How can public confidence in the impartiality of the Supreme Court be protected if the high court reviews a controversial federal law that is vigorously opposed by a justice’s spouse? It’s more than a hypothetical question, law professor Steven Lubet of Northwestern University maintains in a Chicago Tribune commentary that focuses on Justice Clarence Thomas [...

Thursday Judicial Elections Roundup

Posted on October 28, 2010
These other elections around the country were making news. CALIFORNIA: Campaigning for a Superior Court judgeship in San Francisco “has the city’s legal community fearing that a new level of partisan politics has risen in the judicial system,” according to a Wall Street Journal article...

TX Judge Keller: Are Her Trials Over?

Posted on October 28, 2010
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb7rJ5oVTcc Judge Sharon Keller, Texas’ top criminal court judge, recently said she felt ?vindicated? by a special three-judge panel?s dismissal of an earlier reprimand against her (see Gavel Grab). But are her trials over? This week, the executive director of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct and its special counsel asked the special panel to [...

Judicial Independence Forum Now Online

Posted on October 28, 2010
Transcripts from a conference on state judicial independence, featuring retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson,  Executive Director Bert Brandenburg of Justice at Stake and others, are now available by clicking here for an online archive of The Seattle University Law Review...

Election 2010: Soft-on-Crime Charges Fly in MI

Posted on October 28, 2010
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP_Ha588x1Y In Michigan, both political parties are delivering campaign bombs that accuse state Supreme Court candidates of coddling criminals. In one Democratic TV ad, a faceless narrator says Judge Mary Beth Kelly could have imprisoned Ihab Maslamani before a crime spree led to the brutal murder of a man abducted outside a sub shop...

What Will IA Battle Mean for the Nation?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Iowa’s fierce retention election battle over three state Supreme Court justices who voted to legalize same-sex marriage is taking on national implications. The white-hot Iowa struggle “has been the flash point for a national debate over how judges should be selected,” according to a CNN report...

Campaign Ad Likens US Judge and Terrorists

Posted on October 28, 2010
In one of the year’s harshest attack ads, a sitting Alabama justice likens federal Judge Virginia Phillips, who struck down the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, to the Al-Qaida terror group. Republican Justice Tom Parker (photo at right) protests that “liberal activists like Judge Phillips are overturning marriage laws, raising taxes, violating property rights, [...

Did Court Predict Wrong on ?Citizens United??

Posted on October 28, 2010
When the Supreme Court opened the spigot to corporate and union money pouring into campaign ads, it signaled the public would learn quickly who paid. But that didn’t happen, a Los Angeles Times article reports. “Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors [...

O?Connor: Didn?t Authorize NV Robo-Call Message

Posted on October 27, 2010
Nevada voters who were awoken after midnight recently with robo-calls featuring a recording from retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor aren’t the only ones who are unhappy. Some questions have been raised about Justice O’Connor’s activity, and according to the Blog of Legal Times, she said in a statement today about the calls in [...

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