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Saturday, November 04, 2006

Courts - Justice O'Connor confesses second thoughts about Republican Party of Minnesota v. White

This is interesting.

According to a report by Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told a San Francisco audience Friday that judges are under political attack nationwide, and a ruling she endorsed four years ago is partly to blame.

"I'm increasingly concerned about the current climate of challenge to judicial independence,'' O'Connor, who retired in January after 24 years on the court, told a gathering of state judges from around the country. "Unhappiness with judges today is at a very intense level." * * *

[S]he said she was troubled by "increased partisan activity in judicial elections," with "large sums of money spent by special interests.''

A related development, she said, has been the proliferation of questionnaires sent by interest groups to state judicial candidates, asking their views on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and the death penalty.

Those surveys are largely the result of the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling that judicial candidates had a constitutional right to declare their views on legal or political issues, O'Connor said. She was part of the court's 5-4 majority that overturned a judicial ethics rule in Minnesota that banned such statements.

Some lower courts have since interpreted the ruling broadly to strike down ethical standards that prohibit judicial candidates from making campaign promises of how they would address particular issues. California has such a standard, but it has not been the subject of any court ruling.

"That (Minnesota) case, I confess, does give me pause,'' O'Connor said, adding that she expects the Supreme Court to revisit the issue and define the boundaries of free speech for court candidates.

The decision, of course, was Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, 536 U.S. 762 (2002). For background, start with this ILB entry, headed "Judicial Surveys Vex the Bench."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 4, 2006 12:34 PM
Posted to Courts in general