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Are Georgia’s state
Supreme Court elections in danger of becoming too political?
They are, if you believe the president of the State Bar of
Georgia, who recently took to the opinion pages to warn of “deep
trouble for democracy” unless judges maintain their independence
from “undue interference, influence peddling, or political
pressure.”
These are platitudes
few would disagree with. Of course judges must remain
independent. But this does not mean independence from the people
who elect them. This is why the authors of Georgia’s
Constitution decided on an elective judiciary in the first
place.
Voters are entitled
to know what principles and philosophy a judicial candidate will
bring to the bench. It is hardly beneath a judge or candidate to
explain that philosophy, or record, so that citizens can make
their own decisions and vote accordingly.
Don’t think voters
and judges interact in meaningful ways? The Georgia Supreme
Court just handed down a decision on the marriage amendment,
citing overwhelming voter support for the proposition as
important authority on which the Justices relied.
Many trial lawyers
who support judicial candidates often insist on “non-partisan”
silence from judicial candidates to provide a convenient cover
for candidates whose liberal, activist, and often anti-business
views would prove a tough sell in free and open debate. The most
powerful check – perhaps the only check – on this sort of
judicial activism is an educated and informed electorate. We’ve
been voting for judges in this state for more than 100 years.
But won’t “powerful
special interests” be able to “bankroll candidates for the
court,” the State Bar president asks?
It is true, of
course, that openness and transparency are critical to ensuring
that special interests don’t exert undue influence – a rule that
applies most prominently to the personal injury lawyers’ lobby
itself. For well over a decade, the most powerful special
interest in elections has been the plaintiff’s bar – or, as it
has been aptly termed, Trial Lawyers Inc.
According to the
nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org), as
of May 29, lawyers and law firms were the top contributor to
federal candidates for the 2006 elections, donating nearly $69
million – 70 percent of it to Democrats. The oil and gas
industry – Big Oil to its detractors – has chipped in a mere $10
million. In fact, so far in this election cycle, lawyers have
donated more than three times the contributions of the
much-maligned oil and gas, tobacco, and pharmaceutical
industries combined.
Since 1990, trial
lawyers have kicked in nearly $725 million to federal candidates
– and ranked as the No. 1 contributor every election cycle
except one, when they were No. 2.
The reality is that
trial lawyers are spending millions to help elect judges to
their liking in state judicial elections. They support the
candidates most likely to share their views on liability law and
to take a favorable view of large damage awards on which the
tort bar thrives. And they have consistently used the influence
they have bought to block national legal reform legislation.
Businesses and citizens who support legal reform and believe in
judicial restraint have, if anything, been the ones reluctant to
introduce politics into judicial elections.
Contributing millions
of dollars to favored judicial candidates may be the right of
the trial bar, but it hardly qualifies their spokesmen to assume
the moral high ground and fault others for participating in the
process.
Much as they seem to
think that personal injury lawyers own our courts, they do not.
The courts, like the other two branches of government, are still
of, by, and for the people – not just plaintiffs’ lawyers.
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