Litigation

?Fair Courts in Cross-Fire,? Times Editorial Warns

By Peter Hardin

Not only has soaring special interest spending on judicial elections threatened public confidence in fair and impartial courts, but a worrisome new trend looms on the horizon.

A New York Times editorial sounds an urgent alarm over “perhaps the most troubling new development” in state judicial elections. It identifies this threat as the changing face of retention (up-or-down) elections, which were designed to be as apolitical as possible and to protect judges from the “rough-and-tumble” of the competitive election cycle.

The editorial is entitled “Fair Courts in the Cross-Fire.” It begins by declaring concern over rising special interest spending on state elections. “The New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2000-2009: Decade of Change,” co-authored by the Justice at Stake Campaign, showed that in the past decade, fundraising by state Supreme Court candidates rocketed to $206.9 million, more than doubling the $83.3 million raised in the 1990s (see Gavel Grab). Here is the editorial’s lament about the current election season:

“The stage seems set for record-shattering spending wars, dominated by interest groups bent on influencing judicial decisions and by mud-slinging attack ads that were once limited to contested campaigns for executive or legislative offices.”

The editorial then moves to retention elections in several states, where incumbent state Supreme Court justices have come under fire over controversial rulings. The high spending of interest groups on competitive judicial elections, and the politicization of state court judgeships, is spreading to these retention elections, the editorial warns, and judicial independence is threatened further:

“In all, the money spent on retention elections this year could surpass the total for the entire previous decade, said Adam Skaggs, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School.

“The nation?s system of justice depends on having judges who are fair-minded, independent and unafraid to make unpopular decisions. The onslaught coming this fall will not help.”

The Brennan Center is a partner of Justice at Stake. The two nonpartisan reform groups recently published a report spotlighting the trend influencing retention elections, and you can read it by clicking here. To catch up on other media coverage of this trend, check out Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 29, 2010 (boomark / email).