judicial elections – Page 9 – The Interdependent Third Branch

North Carolina Court of Appeals update

Last month I reported on a fast-moving battle between North Carolina’s Republican legislature and Democratic governor over the state’s Court of Appeals. The legislature proposed a bill to shrink the size of the court in order to deny the governor additional appointments. In response, a court of appeals judge took early retirement so that the governor could make an interim appointment before the bill was passed. Literally fifteen minutes later, the governor appointed John Arrowood, a former judge who had lost his seat in a previous election, to the Court of Appeals for a second time.

Now it appears that the saga will continue for the next two years. Andrew Heath, a trial judge appointed last December by the previous governor, has announced that he will challenge Judge Arrowood for his seat in the 2018 election. Stay tuned.

Insurance claims analyst with no legal education elected as judge in Pennsylvania

Brian Tupper, a claims analyst with Berkshire Hathaway, will take the bench in Wilkes-Barre. The seat was held by Tupper’s father until his recent retirement. The local story notes: “Because he is not a law graduate, Tupper prepared for his new job by completing a four week certification course with the Justified Judicial System of Pennsylvania in June 2016.”

Oh, boy.

Roundup on Pennsylvania’s judicial elections

Pennsylvania voters will go to the polls this coming Tuesday to choose their state judges in their traditional odd-year, contested, partisan elections. Here are some of the late-breaking stories from across the state:

The Philadelphia Democratic City Committee has had a rough few days. First, it endorsed ten candidates for what it thought was ten open positions on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (the state trial court). But the state Supreme Court subsequently cut the number of open seats to nine, leaving the Committee with one too many endorsements. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Bar Association announced its intent to hand out flyers with its own endorsements — based on neutral evaluations, not party affiliation — at the same times and locations as the Democratic City Committee.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has the lowdown on every judicial candidate in the city (Democrat and Republican) here.
24 candidates are vying for six judgeships in Northampton County. The job pays $90,000 per year, requires the judge to perform weddings and handle traffic tickets. A law degree is not required.
Candidates in a single trial court race in Westmoreland County have collectively spent more than $268,000 — nearly twice what the job pays.
As we reported earlier this week, Martin Sheen continues to stump for one judge seeking reelection. Nothing particularly wrong with that, although Sheen has seen fit to blur the endorsement lines between his real identity and that of the president he once played on TV.
An Erie newspaper has editorialized against the current election system, noting that it is “no way to staff a competent bench.”
And the Reading Eagle offers an editorial endorsement of the Pennsylvania Bar’s candidate evaluations.

Finally, in a very positive development, the proposed legislation to shift Pennsylvania from partisan judicial elections to a merit selection system gained some traction when the House Judiciary Committee approved a measure to place the issue before the voters. There is still a long road ahead, but it can be done. And voters in other states have proven more than capable of understanding the benefits of merit selection.

Tuesday should be interesting.

Imaginary president stumps for real judicial candidate

In advance of this month’s statewide judicial elections, actor Martin Sheen has appeared on YouTube and television, advocating for the reelection of Pennsylvania judge Joseph Cosgrove. That Sheen would support Cosgrove is not surprising: they are apparently old friends and political allies, and Cosgrove evidently represented Sheen for time when he was in private practice.

But the ads are not just an endorsement from Martin Sheen, the actor. Sheen deliberately blurs the line between his real-life persona and that of Josiah Bartlet, the fictional president from “The West Wing.” Here is the YouTube endorsement, featuring a “decree” signed by Bartlet.

Continue reading “Imaginary president stumps for real judicial candidate”

Philadelphia Bar sets out evaluation criteria for judicial candidates

Many states conduct periodic performance evaluations of their judges, either for internal education and improvement, or to educate voters in advance of judicial retention elections, or both. No state formally evaluates judicial candidates along the same criteria — a process I have called prospective performance evaluation — but the task is so important that local and state bar associations sometimes undertake it themselves.

The Philadelphia Bar Association recently unveiled their new evaluation process for judicial candidates, and it is impressively thorough — much more than this local news report suggests. The standards set forth by the Philly Bar are carefully done and well worth a review by voters and court observers alike.

Judicial aspirants brown nose at Brooklyn Democratic fundraiser

Those who are truly concerned about money and politics* might take notice of this past weekend’s fundraiser for Jacob Gold, “the dean of Democratic District Leaders,” in Brooklyn. The fundraiser brought out “a small army of attorneys,” all of whom hoped to wow the party bosses and win one of a handful endorsements for the bench in the coming election.

I have previously noted the rather nauseating control that party bosses maintain over the selection of New York’s trial judges. Events like this offer little solace for the prospect of an impartial and independent judiciary. New Yorkers deserve much better.

* As opposed to those who simply and mindlessly rant about Citizens United.

Update on state legislation affecting the courts

State legislatures continue to propose and advance bills that will impact their respective court systems. Here are some of the latest developments:

Indiana’s proposal to convert Marion County (Indianapolis) to a merit selection system is heading to conference committee. The latest version of the bill calls for a 14-member nominating committee to choose three final candidates for the governor’s selection; four of the committee members would be chosen from voters. Previous coverage of the Indiana bill and its history is here.
In Arkansas, a new bill would change the way state judges are elected in Cumberland County Superior Court. The current election system grants seats on the bench to the top two vote-getters among all candidates. The bill would require candidates to declare which of the two judicial seats they are seeking.
The Florida House of Representatives has passed an amendment to the state constitution that would impose term limits on state appellate judges, including supreme court justices. This is a terrible idea, but happily it is still in its infancy. The state senate would also have to approve the move, and then voters would have to approve it in 2018. Similar efforts in others states have been defeated in recent years after they were exposed for the transparent political proposals that they were.
Nebraska’s unicameral legislature has advanced a bill to raise judicial pay in the state.

Stern on Judicial Candidates’ Right to Lie

Nat Stern (Florida State) has posted his new article, Judicial Candidates’ Right to Lie, on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

A large majority of state judges are chosen through some form of popular election. In Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, the Supreme Court struck down a law forbidding certain judicial campaign speech. A decade later, the Court in United States v. Alvarez ruled that factually false statements do not constitute categorically unprotected expression under the First Amendment. Together these two holdings, along with the Court’s wider protection of political expression and disapproval of content-based restrictions, cast serious doubt on states’ ability to ban false and misleading speech by judicial candidates. Commonly known as the misrepresent clause, this prohibition has intuitive appeal in light of judges’ responsibilities and still exists in many states. Given the provision’s vulnerability to challenge, however, states may be able to avert chronic fabrication by judicial candidates only by removing its ultimate source — judicial elections themselves.

Florida judge admits ethics violations in election campaign

From the Palm Beach Post: Santino says she broke rules in election but still fit to be judge.

The judge, who was elected in November, is facing disciplinary action for four ethics violations, stemming from campaign statements that impugned the integrity of her opponent and the entire judicial process. Of note, Judge Santino sent a campaign email disparaging her opponent’s criminal defense work and is tied to a Facebook page proclaiming that her opponent “has made a lot of money trying to free Palm Beach County’s worst criminals.”

Judge Santino faces a disciplinary hearing before another state judge this week, after which recommendations will be made to the state supreme court. From an organizational perspective, this is another interesting example of the courts policing the actions of their own members even when those actions fall outside the strict definition of judicial activity.

The case, alas, is also another example of how contested judicial elections can compromise both the actual and perceived impartiality of judges. Most judges, of course, never run into ethical issues of this type. But elections vastly increase the risk of such ethical violations, and the misbehavior of a handful of judges or judicial candidates can have damaging ripple effects on the public trust of the entire judiciary.

North Carolina House overrides veto on partisan judicial elections bill

As I reported previously, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that would require state trial court elections to be partisan. Candidates would have to participate in party primaries and run under a specific party affiliation. Disappointingly, the state House of Representatives voted to override the veto yesterday. The issue now moves to the state Senate.

UPDATE: The Senate has completed the veto override. All North Carolina judicial elections will be partisan going forward.