Category: state courts

The new and old style of politics in judicial selection

Earlier I reported on the deadlock in the Connecticut Judiciary Committee over the nomination of Justice Andrew McDonald to become that state’s next Chief Justice. The entire legislature will take up the nomination next Monday. In the meantime, certain trolls have apparently posted homophobic slurs about McDonald on the internet. (McDonald, a former Democratic legislator, is openly gay.) And in response, a left-leaning lobbying group called True Justice has created a digital ad accusing Republican opponents of McDonald’s nomination of “hate” and “homophobia.” The Republican leadership has been insistent that its opposition has nothing to do with McDonald’s sexual orientation, which seems wholly plausible since it was never an issue when McDonald was originally confirmed to the bench five years ago.

To be clear, it certainly does appear that Republican opposition to McDonald’s ascension is politically based — they would prefer someone with more conservative (or less liberal) credentials. This intersection of law and politics is perhaps unavoidable in the modern age, but it still hurts the credibility and perceived impartiality of the judiciary. Legislative Republicans would be better off confirming an accomplished jurist to the position for which he was duly nominated, and liberal agitators would be better off by not trying to turn every policy decision with which they disagree into hysteria and name-calling.

Meanwhile, Hawaii’s federal district court will soon have new judges, thanks in large part to tried-and-true backroom politics. This article lays out the interesting negotiations between the White House and Hawaii’s Democratic senators to get a number of federal judicial nominees confirmed. Score one for the old style of politics.

An example of nomination cascades in Georgia

I recently wrote a post for Prawfsblawg on judicial nomination cascades, in which a sitting judge is elevated to a higher court, leaving a seat on the bench which itself must be filled. Sometimes the cascade stops after the second appointment, but on occasion we see triple or even quadruple cascades, as each seat is subsequently filled with a judge from a lower court. (A commenter to the Prawfsblawg post, for example, noted the Rehnquist-Scalia-Sentelle-Voorhees cascade at the federal level in 1986-87).

Federal nomination cascades often run to the state level, where governors (and occasionally legislatures) typically have authority to fill judicial vacancies by appointment. In recent weeks, the Georgia Court of Appeals has been particularly affected: three judges have been nominated (and two confirmed) for federal positions. With another judge retiring soon, Governor Nathan Deal will have to fill four of the court’s fifteen seats in short order.

Georgians should be proud that their intermediate appellate court has produced so many jurists thought worthy of federal positions. But the state will have to act quickly and carefully to keep the Court of Appeals at full strength.

 

South Carolina courts face stenographer shortage

For the second time in two days, a story on the severe shortage of court reporters in a state court system — this time in South Carolina. In influx of retirements, brought on by changes to the state retirement program, has led to a significant shortage of stenographers in courts across the state. The court system has launched an audio reporting program to compensate for the shortage, but as I discussed yesterday, audio recording is inferior in many ways to a live stenographer.

Texas courts face shortage of stenographers

The Texas state courts face delayed hearings and trials resulting from a dwindling supply of court reporters.  The Texas Office of Court Administration reports a decline of 20 percent in the number of available stenographers since 2005.

While some courts across the country have moved to audiotape as a less expensive option, live court reporters typically produce transcripts that are far more accurate. The story quotes stenographer Chavela Crain, who noted

“We deal with dialects, accents, coughing, sneezing, sirens going by, somebody says they were offered 15,000 for something, and I can say ‘Wait, was that 15,000 or 50,000?'” Crain explained. “On an audio (recording) you’re not going to be able to tell that, and if somebody’s not in the room there is nobody to clarify that.”

West Virginia’s appellate court crisis

Odd things are happening on the West Virginia Supreme Court.

On February 16, Chief Justice Allen Loughry was demoted and replaced as chief by Justice Margaret Workman. The unusual move, which followed a vote by the court’s other members, was apparently precipitated by a spending scandal. The court system spent more than $360,000 on Loughry’s office space since he joined the court in 2013, including a $32,000 couch. Loughry and the state court administrator pointed fingers at each other. The administrator has since been fired. In light of the crisis, the state senate voted to assume immediate legislative oversight of the judicial branch’s budget.

Shortly before these events transpired, Loughry also undertook a massive administrative reorganization of the West Virginia court system, consolidating 27 court divisions into only six. Several court administrators lost senior positions, and at least two supreme court justices strongly opposed the move. Justice Robin Davis told a reporter:

“I voted against the Court’s most recent Administrative Office reorganization for two critical and distinct reasons…. First, there is an appalling lack of clarity in the newly structured Court Services Division because there is no longer a distinct chain of command for each of the different types of courts comprising the judiciary.

“Collapsing magistrate courts, drug courts, family courts, and circuit courts under the same umbrella of supervision will severely hamper and drastically delay response time in answering critical questions and responding to the needs of these courts.

The “purported efficiency” of streamlining the division will in fact, actually restrict citizens’ access to justice and judicial resources, she stated.

As this crisis unfolds, legislators are separately debating whether to add an intermediate court of appeals to the state judiciary. West Virginia is one of only nine states without an intermediate appellate court, meaning that all appeals must be heard by the state supreme court, or not at all. Republicans in the legislature are pushing the change, with support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There are many advantages to adding an intermediate appellate court. For one, it would streamline the supreme court’s workload. It also carries the potential to lower the stakes of electing supreme court justices: if the supreme court were not the only appellate body in West Virginia, major donors would have less incentive to finance supreme court candidates. (And the historical corruption on the West Virginia Supreme Court as a direct result of election financing is well documented.) Of course, the same problem might just be manifested in the intermediate appellate court as well, but there is at least a chance for reform. Against these advantages is the cost: the tag for a new appellate court would be many millions of dollars.

It will be fascinating to see how these developments play out.  Can/will structural reform to the West Virginia courts bring an air of ethical reform as well?

Judge denies stay of injunction in Cook County records case; defendants appeal to the Seventh Circuit

This blog has been following a First Amendment challenge to the filing practices in the Cook County (Illinois) courts. In November, the Courthouse News Service filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that Cook County was violating the First Amendment by denying the press and the public immediate access to electronically filed civil cases. In January, the federal district court agreed, and issued an injunction giving the Cook County Clerk’s Office 30 days to implement a new procedure.

That procedure has yet to be implemented, and the federal district court has twice rejected motions to stay the injunction. Now the clerk’s office has appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the federal courts never should have heard the case under the abstention doctrine announced in Younger v. Harris. No word yet from the Seventh Circuit.

I have more extensive thoughts on this entire lawsuit here.

Counting on the Low-Information Voter

The LSE Blog features some interesting new research by University of Texas Professor Brent Boyea on the intersection of partisan elections, campaign contributions, and professionalized courts. Looking at 12 years’ worth of data from state high court elections, Boyea found that campaign contributors are nearly twice as generous, on average, in states with partisan judicial elections than they are in states with nonpartisan judicial elections. He also found that “contributors support candidates more actively in states with professionalized courts where judges have higher salaries, advanced resources, and courts have freedom to decide their agenda.” And contributors are most generous when elections are partisan and courts are professionalized. This suggests, to me at least, that campaign contributors expect to get the most “bang for the buck” in states where a candidate’s election is all but assured on partisan grounds, and the elected judge will later have some freedom to act in a manner consistent with the contributor’s own agenda.

Somewhat related is this story out of Illinois, discussing how attorney Phillip Spiwack legally changed his name to Shannon O’Malley in advance of his campaign for a Cook County judgeship. Spiwack/O’Malley appears to be conceding to a stubborn reality of Chicago judicial elections: having an Irish woman’s name is an extraordinarily valuable commodity at the polls—more valuable, it seems, than professional experience, skill, or judicial temperament.

These items add to a growing body of evidence that in judicial election states, citizens are virtually expected to come to the polls armed with no more information than a candidate’s party affiliation or surname. How this advances the integrity, efficiency, or legitimacy of the judicial system is beyond me.

(Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg.)

D.C. Superior Court able to cobble together juries despite computer glitch

A computer glitch in the D.C. Superior Court prevented jury summonses from being printed and delivered in late December, leaving court officials scrambling for jurors in late January. Ultimately, the court was able to bring in enough jurors on a few days’ notice to be able to hold the scheduled jury trials.

Jury trials are a critical part of American democracy, and in many instances a constitutional right. But jury service is also an imposition on the lives of our citizens. Courts need to make it as easy as possible for people to perform their civic obligations, and monitoring whether jury notices go out on time seems like a simple place to start.