« Ind. Decisions - Transfers Pending List updated | Main | Ind. Courts - Resources for the 2006 Indiana Appellate Judicial Retention Election »
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Courts - Campaign Cash Mirrors the Ohio Supreme Court’s Rulings
Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts have a lengthy and important article in the Sunday issue of the New York Times, tracking case outcomes and contributions on the Ohio Supreme Court.
A few quotes from the beginning of the long report:
In one of the cases, every justice in the 4-to-3 majority had taken money from affiliates of the companies. None of the dissenters had done so, but they had accepted contributions from lawyers for the plaintiffs.The story is accompanied by a number of sidebars and videos, and this rather amazing chart.Thirty-nine states elect judges, and 30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign. As the amounts rise, questions about whether money is polluting the independence of the judiciary are being fiercely debated across the nation. And nowhere is the battle for judicial seats more ferocious than in Ohio.
An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O’Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court.
In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors’ cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.
Even sitting justices have started to question the current system. “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station in any race I’ve ever been in as I did in a judicial race,” said Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, a Republican member of the Ohio Supreme Court. “Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests.”
“They mean to be buying a vote,” Justice Pfeifer added. “Whether they succeed or not, it’s hard to say.”
Three recent cases, two in Illinois and one in West Virginia, have put the complaints in sharp focus. Elected justices there recently refused to disqualify themselves from hearing suits in which tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. The defendants were insurance, tobacco and coal companies whose supporters had spent millions of dollars to help elect the justices.
After a series of big-money judicial contests around the nation, the balance of power in several state high courts has tipped in recent years in favor of corporations and insurance companies.
In the 2002 Ohio judicial election, for example, two candidates won seats that year on the seven-member court after each raised more money than one of the candidates for governor that year.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 30, 2006 09:04 PM
Posted to Courts in general