Grisham Redux
August 25, 2008
Stephen Vaden turns John Grisham upside down in a terrific piece in yesterday’s Nashville Tennessean. In Grisham’s latest novel of tort lawyer hero worship, a Mississippi chemical company helps elect a pro-business justice to the state’s Supreme Court with the expectation he’ll overturn a jury verdict against them. But as Vaden skillfully points out:
… [in] the current headlines emanating from Mississippi … one finds an almost complete role reversal.
Vaden, of course, is referring to Mississippi tort kingpin Dickie Scruggs, who will be trading his pinstripes for prison stripes after admitting to bribing a judge to approve juicy legal fees. But Vaden isn’t just being ironic; there’s a critical policy lesson here as well.
Grisham has used his fame to push for abolishing judicial elections and hand this power over to a small group of lawyers who meet behind closed doors, completely free of public scrutiny, to pick judges. As Vaden rightly concludes:
Rather than remove the influence of interested trial attorneys from the selection process, Grisham’s plan calcifies it and removes the appointments process from the realm of normal public debate. It does not eliminate corruption so much as make a more insidious form of it possible.
Under so-called “merit” selection schemes, the Dickie Scruggses won’t need to bribe judges – they’ll get to pick them in the first place! But that’s a novel we’ll never read from John Grisham.