A Champion Of Democratic Reform In Tennessee
June 30, 2008
Tennessee’s “current judicial selection process is a perfect storm of special interest control, closed government and lack of accountability,” says Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey in a well-argued oped in the Tri-City News (TN). Ramsey clearly spells out the problems with judicial selection Star Chambers – not just in Tennessee, but in all states that have experimented with this undemocratic system for selecting powerful state judges.
- Special interests control who sits on the bench. As Lt. Gov., Ramsey can appoint eight members to the judicial selection commission, but “six of those – by law – must come from the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association … and the District Attorneys General Conference. This means that 75 percent of those who pick our judicial nominees are selected by special interests in the legal community.”
- The commission of special interests meets in secret and “refuses to open its meetings and deliberations to the public.”
Ramsey pushed a reform proposal that would have “removed special interest control of the nominations but still allowed legal groups to submit names, though neither I nor the speaker of the House would be bound by their list.” He also joined Governor Phil Bredesen in calling on the commission to come out from behind closed doors and meet in public.
While special interest groups managed to kill all reform attempts, the state legislature failed to reauthorize the judicial selection commission. As a result, the Star Chamber is now operating under a one-year sunset provision, and Ramsey has pledged to “continue the fight to reform the commission in 2009.”
Unelected, unaccountable judicial selection commissions which completely insulated from the people inevitably come to see their power to pick judges as a sacred right, not a public service. The people of Tennessee are lucky to have a champion of democratic reform like Lt. Gov. Ramsey.
“Common Sense on Punitive Damages”
June 30, 2008
L. Gordon Crovitz has a good piece in today’s Wall Street Journal that navigates the thinking behind the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to reduce the $2.5 billion punitive damage award against Exxon for the Valdez spill nearly 20 years ago and establish some principle to guide future cases. “We should cheer,” Crovitz writes, “when the Supreme Court issues clear, transparent and common-sense rules, giving judges, jurors and citizens new understanding about how the legal system should work.”
Scruggs Gets 5 years
June 27, 2008
Dickie Scruggs, who gained fame and considerable fortune in the 1990s for his part in suing large corporations for billions, was sentenced today to five years in prison for conspiracy to bribe a judge. Scruggs’ son will be sentenced next week for his role in this family affair.
There are a lot of lessons one could draw from this sorry business, but one of the most important may be the moral hazards involved in putting our courts in the business of redistributing such large sums of money. Whatever else one might say about Scruggs, he knew his way around a courtroom, and he clearly thought $50,000 bribe was enough to gain a favorable ruling in a case with a pay-off of $26.5 million.
The FBI deserves kudos, not only enabling justice to be done in this case, but helping to protect our system of justice as a whole from people consumed by the kind of gargantuan greed we’ve been told only large American corporations can be guilty of. Mississippi’s Sun Herald has an article describing the sentencing here.
Arizona Medical Experts
June 27, 2008
An Arizona law requiring that expert witnesses in medical malpractice trials actually be experts in the field they’re testifying about has been struck down in appellate court.
The law had clearly sought to end the abuse of “professional witness” doctors who make a lucrative career testifying in medical malpractice trials at the behest of trial lawyer firms and practice little if any actual medicine. The law supplemented an existing, overly-vague rule that witnesses be qualified by “knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.” The new law insisted that expert witnesses actually practice in the same medical specialty as the defendant and devote most of their professional time to either active clinical practice or instruction of students.
The appellate court’s rationale was that legislators shouldn’t be telling judges how to run their courtrooms. But apparently the on-going charade of bogus medical experts making a mockery of their courtrooms hasn’t been enough to get the judges themselves to clean up their act.
UPDATE: Carter Wood over at PointofLaw has more.
A “Power Grab” For Michigan’s Judiciary
June 26, 2008
A Detroit News editorial demolishes a bogus fall ballot initiative being circulated by an outfit called Reform Michigan Government Now. Although cloaked in good government language, the News reports, the “real thrust of the [proposed constitutional] amendment appears to be getting at state judges with GOP backgrounds” in a “power grab of this state’s judiciary.”
The proposed amendment, says the News, would eliminate two seats on the Michigan Supreme Court, dumping the two least senior justices…who just happen to be Republican and the only Jewish and African-American justices on the court. It would also reduce the number of appellate court seats by removing all judges whose term expires on January 1, 2011…which just happens to mean six out of the seven judges removed would be Republicans.
Even more troubling is the secret nature of this alleged “reform” group. Again, the Detroit News has it right:
“That the backers of the proposal are unwilling to come forward is an indication they don’t want voters to know who they are. That should worry anyone asked to sign the petition. It is far too radical a rewrite of the state Constitution to be done in a ballot measure pushed by anonymous funders.”
Well said.
Kansas County Challenges Secret Selection
June 26, 2008
Citizens of Johnson County, Kansas have successfully placed an initiative on the November ballot that would end the secret selection of judges (through a so-called “merit” system) and allow voters to decide who sits on the bench. Justice At Stake’s GavelGrab blog links to a story in the St. Charles County Business Record reporting that some of the grandees of the county’s legal establishment are defending their power to control the courts. In a recent press conference, one member of the county’s lawyer-dominated judicial selection commission protested that commissioners are only “focused on selecting the best person to be judge.”
But the problem isn’t with the good intentions of individual commission members; it’s with a system that gives too much power to a small handful of unelected, unaccountable commissioners who meet in secret to pick judges. Democratic election of judges is the best way to disperse that power to where it belongs – with the people.
Chipping Away At Democracy In Minnesota
June 26, 2008
The St. Paul Pioneer Press wades into the judicial selection debate with an editorial endorsing the replacement of democratic elections for judges with so-called “merit selection” combined with uncontested retention elections.
Unlike Minnesota’s Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, the Pioneer Press at least had the tact not to question “the insight and sophistication” of Minnesota voters, but the result is the same: if the paper’s editors have their way, a small, unelected, unaccountable commission will control 1/3rd of the state government.
The editorial tries to convince readers that Minnesota basically uses a “merit” process already, since most judges leave office before their term expires, leaving the governor to fill vacant seats on the bench with the help of recommendations from a board. But there is a crucial difference. Under Minnesota’s current system, the governor is not bound by the choices of the commission, meaning that the ultimate decision is made by a public official who is directly accountable to the people. Voters are further empowered with the ability to choose another judge in a contested election.
Under the system supported by the Pioneer Press, however, the governor would be “required by law” to choose judicial nominees from a list dictated by an elite commission that is unelected, unaccountable, and completely insulated from the people. In other states that have experimented with this system, the commission is typically dominated by lawyers and meets in secret with no public oversight.
Citizens under the Pioneer Press’ plan would be reduced to casting “yes” or “no” votes heavily influenced by another unelected, unaccountable commission of legal elites who would provide “comprehensive performance evaluations of judges,” presumably because ordinary people don’t have the “insight or sophistication,” to use Chief Justice Magnuson’s words, to make this decision themselves. In other states, “retention” elections usually result in lopsided “victories” typical of the Politburo “elections” in the old Soviet Union – hardly the type of democratic elections envisioned by the authors of Minnesota’s Constitution.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals and the Minnesota Supreme Court wield tremendous power. The rulings of judges on these courts can overturn laws passed by elected legislators and signed by elected governors. Small business owners, farmers, doctors, nurses, teachers, parents, police officers – all of these people and more are impacted by the decisions of Minnesota’s two highest courts. The Pioneer Press can give no good reason why the collective wisdom of millions of Minnesota citizens like these should be replaced by the whims of a handful of lawyers.
“Show Me Better Judges”
June 25, 2008
Does “merit selection” – where lawyers meet in secret to decide who wears the black robes – take politics out of judicial appointments? Not according to Paul Jacob, who runs Missouri’s “merit” plan through the wringer in an excellent piece in Human Events and shows just how political this allegedly non-political system can be.
Jacob calls Missouri’s process “an insider game, a stacked deck,” which of course it is. The Missouri Bar chooses three members of the state’s seven-member judicial nominating commission, but the state’s chief justice is also a member, giving the Missouri Bar a virtual hammerlock on judicial nominations. As Jacob writes:
“The assumption that the Bar Association is a public service group with a disinterested agenda, unaffected by biases and exempt from corrupting influences, is hard to maintain with a straight face….It is far more reasonable to argue that the Bar is the last group one wants in charge of a judicial selection process, rather than the primary group. It is a guild, and its interests can be as antagonistic to the public interest as any group’s can possibly be.”
In 2007, the commission sent three nominees to Gov. Matt Blunt, all of whom were activist judges who didn’t reflect Gov. Blunt’s views or the people who elected him. As part of the vetting process, Jacob writes, the commission “grilled” nominees about such non-judicial issues as their views on the Adam Smith Foundation, a group that calls for changing the state’s judicial selection system.
It’s natural that lawyers want to control who will sit in judgment of state laws, but it’s hardly democratic to give one special interest group – even one with as lofty a view of itself as the legal profession – all that power. Far better, as Jacob proposes, to scrap secret selection and put the people back in charge.
What If You Filed A Lawsuit, But No One Came?
June 25, 2008
A group of plaintiffs’ lawyers are in a Manhattan federal courtroom today asking a judge to approve a settlement in a class action lawsuit that will allow them to reap $1.3 million in fees compared to $5 to $35 each for the class members, The New York Times reports.
The class action was filed against video game maker Take-Two Interactive, which sold its popular “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” game with hidden sex scenes included. The offensive scenes were un-viewable by ordinary players – they had been edited out of the game and could only be seen by using special software. But that didn’t stop the trial lawyers from rushing to court on behalf unwary gamers who purchased the prurient product.
The lawyers, no doubt, were counting on a lucrative payday. There was one little glitch, however. Even though millions of people bought the game, only 2,676 actually filed a claim. Take-Two Interactive estimates it will cost about $30,000 to dispose of these claims, compared to $1.3 million to settle the lawyers’ bills – a ratio of 43:1, our friends at The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog helpfully point out.
Theodore Frank, director of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the American Enterprise Institute who also contributes to Overlawyered.com, says of the settlement:
“There are two possibilities. Possibility one is they have a meritorious lawsuit and they’re selling out the class for attorneys’ fees. The other possibility is that, and frankly I think this is the more likely possibility, they brought a meritless lawsuit that had no business being brought to court at all.”
The New York Times reports that Frank is trying to “scuttle the deal” by objecting to the settlement in court.
West Virginia Wrestles With Junk Science In The Courtroom
June 24, 2008
West Virginia seems to be an annual fixture on the American Tort Reform Association’s list of Judicial Hellholes — and one of the reasons has been the widespread dissemination of junk science in the state’s courtrooms. An article in the West Virginia Record chronicles some of the worst junk science abuses and suggests a possible solution.