Litigation

O?Connor on $9m Judicial Election: ?You Like That??

By Peter Hardin

Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor assailed big special-interest spending in judicial elections when she addressed a Chicago Bar Association audience.

Urging an end to state judicial elections and their replacement by merit selection, according to a Chicago Sun-Times article, Justice O’Connor recalled a high-spending Illinois Supreme Court race from 2004:

“It cost just over $9 million for that race. As you might have guessed, the winner of that race got his biggest contributions from a company that had an appeal pending before the Illinois Supreme Court. You like that?”

After Justice Lloyd Karmeier won election, he voted in favor of throwing out a $1.2 billion class-action lawsuit against a company that had given him $350,000, State Farm Insurance. His vote was part of a unanimous court decision.

“Sounds a lot like the Caperton case, doesn’t it?” Justice O’Connor asked. A coal company executive spent $3 million in that case to  elect a West Virginia Supreme Court justice. The U.S. Supreme Court later said it was a violation of due process rights for the justice to hear an appeal by the coal company.  Justice O’Connor added:

“The single greatest threat [to the judiciary] is the flood of money coming into our courtrooms by way of increasingly expensive and volatile judicial campaigns.”

You can learn more about the problems posed by multimillion dollar, special-interest spending in judicial elections from Justice at Stake reports including ?The New Politics of Judicial Elections,? available from links at our Web site resources page. Click here for a JAS page discussing the pros and cons of elections versus judicial appointments, and here to learn more about appointive and retention election systems, often called ?merit selection.? You also can learn about the Caperton case from the JAS resource page about it.

Full post as published by The Gavel on May 20, 2010 (boomark / email).