Constitutional Law

Report Shows Rising Special Interest Pressure on Midwest Courts

by Bert Brandenburg, Executive Director, Justice At Stake

A new report from Justice at Stake, The New Politics of Judicial Elections in the Great Lake States, 2000-2008, shows how the Midwest has become America’s leading judicial elections battleground.  Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin are seeing a growing arms race between corporate interests, trial lawyers, ideological groups and political partisans who are committed to bending state judges to their will.

For example, more than half of all television advertisements that have appeared in state Supreme Court races since 2000 have aired in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. The most expensive contested judicial election in American history took place in Illinois in 2004, when two candidates combined to raise over $9.3 million. (The winner called the fundraising ‘obscene.’)
 
The public is growing worried.  A January 2008 survey revealed that 78 percent of Wisconsin voters believe campaign contributions to judicial candidates have “a great deal” or “some” influence on the decisions judges make in the courtroom
 
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor puts it, “judicial elections are becoming political prizefights where partisans and special interests seek to install judges who will answer to them instead of the law and the constitution.”
 
The report was released in conjunction with the Midwest Democracy Network.  Click here to read a press release.  To read the report, click here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).