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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Courts - "Chief Justices Sound Alarm on Judicial Elections"
"Conference of state justices fears issue-based political campaigns sap public confidence in the judiciary" is the subhead to this Legal Times story by Tony Mauro. Some quotes (emphasis added by ILB):
The nation's state chief justices are launching a campaign to remind voters of what used to be obvious: Judicial elections are different from those for other offices.None of this will be news to regular readers of the ILB. But where are the details?Voicing "grave concern" over increasingly partisan and costly campaigns, the Conference of Chief Justices -- representing the top jurists in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories -- voted Aug. 2 on measures to emphasize the "unique nature" of judicial elections. At least some of the judges in 39 states are elected.
"It's the money, it's the judicial questionnaires, it's a whole constellation of things happening now that don't advance the public's confidence in the courts," says Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard, outgoing chairman of the conference, who hosted the chief justices' meeting in Indianapolis. "We need to get information to bar associations and judges groups about what to do when the fire alarm goes off, or before the alarm goes off, in an election."
The chief justices also targeted low judicial salaries, which may be discouraging quality candidates from running. New data indicate that state judges' salary increases are lagging behind those of other state employees as well as private sector lawyers.
Though concern has been building for years about the increase in campaign spending and partisanship in what used to be sedate judicial campaigns, the main impetus for the latest effort by the chief justices is the fallout from a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White.
That ruling struck down, on First Amendment grounds, a Minnesota canon of judicial ethics that barred candidates from announcing their views on disputed legal or political issues.
Several lower federal courts have responded to the decision by striking down other state canons and rules aimed at keeping judicial candidates from making campaign promises and partisan statements that may compromise the substance and appearance of impartiality once they are elected. * * *
At a symposium on the impact of the White decision at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nev., last year, participants called on the chief justices to move aggressively to improve public understanding of courts and the need for open-minded judges, as well as to change the "culture" of judicial elections.
A "call to action" endorsed by the participants at the Reno conference urged, "Very high priority must be given to reducing the aspects of judicial elections that jeopardize public confidence in our courts -- our state courts directly, but unquestionably all our courts."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 23, 2006 07:58 AM
Posted to Courts in general