Michigan Court Of Appeals Unloads On Bogus Ballot Petition
August 21, 2008
That smoking hole you see in Lansing is all that’s left of the ballot petition peddled by Reform Michigan Government Now. In a 21-page ruling, the Michigan Court of Appeals shot down the petition as unconstitutional and barred it from the November ballot. According to the unanimous decision:
The RMGN initiative petition is overarching, of a reach and expanse never before seen of any constitutional initiative in Michigan’s long history…. Constitutional modification requires strict adherence to the methods and approaches included in the Constitution itself. Short cuts and end runs to revise the Constitution which ignore the pathways specifically set forth by the framers, cannot be tolerated.
Translation from legalese: The RMGN petition was a sleazy attempt to shred Michigan’s Constitution in order to give Democrats the opportunity to pack the courts and gerrymander Michigan’s legislative districts to ensure their own partisan, political control.
Although it posed as a “reform” initiative, the real purpose of the proposed amendment was revealed after the Mackinac Center unearthed a PowerPoint presentation exposing it as a plot “to help Democrats.” Once the slideshow hit the newspapers, embarrassed Democrats began fleeing from the plan and a group led by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce challenged it in court.
The Detroit Free Press hailed the ruling as a “welcome death” for the RMGN proposal, but backers of this scheme refused to give up the ghost. Former Michigan Democratic House Leader and current Democratic political operative Diane Byrum labeled the decision a “travesty” and pledged to appeal. Good luck.
Actually, the real travesty is that’s Michigan’s Democratic Party leadership is so intellectually bankrupt that they would stoop to a stealth campaign to seize power because they knew their ideas couldn’t win a majority of Michigan voters. Such a ploy might be expected from political hacks like Democratic state party chair Mark Brewer – who mid-wifed the scheme – but its disappointing that Governor Granholm – who helped finance the plan’s development – would show such little respect for Michigan’s Constitution or its voters.
How “Merit” Selection Rigs The Judicial Selection Process For Special Interests
August 21, 2008
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey has an important column on statenewsshot.com documenting how Tennessee’s so-called “merit” selection scheme has rigged the state’s judicial selection process in favor of powerful special interest groups and moved the entire process behind closed doors, out of public view.
Currently special interests control the appointment process. Although I have eight appointments to the [judicial nominating] commission, 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.
What would you expect from a commission dominated by special interests? Raw partisan politics. Beginning in 2006, Ramsey notes, the commission tried to force Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen to accept its nominees even after he had already rejected them.
The commission had twice submitted the name of a favorite son and former head of the Tennessee Democratic Party – after Bredesen made it clear he wished to have qualified minority candidates on any slate he received.
So much for “merit” being the only concern of judicial selection commissions and taking “politics” out of the judicial selection process.
Both Gov. Bredesen and Lt. Gov. Ramsey fought to make the commission more accountable and more open – yet lawyer-dominated committees in the legislature blocked any reform. But Lt. Gov. Ramsey pledges to continue the fight.
The current judicial selection process is a perfect storm of special interest control, closed government and lack of accountability. I intend to continue the fight to reform the commission in 2009.
The best reform, of course, would be to take judicial selection away from special interests altogether and give it back to the people – which is where the wise authors of Tennessee’s Constitution put it in the first place.
Trial Lawyer Sleaze Claims More Victims
August 21, 2008
A Virginia trial lawyer “pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars from clients who had suffered serious injuries to fund a lavish lifestyle” that included a six-bedroom mansion in Virginia horse country and a mountain ski chalet, according to a story in today’s Washington Examiner.
It seems trial lawyer Stephen Conrad was filing personal injury claims, then settling the cases and keeping all the money without ever telling his clients. Conrad has admitted to forging signatures of at least 50 clients on settlement claims and pocketing at least $3.5 million. Investigators believe Conrad “left about 250 victims in his wake.”
Despite Conrad’s stolen millions, he still has an uphill battle to win induction to the Sleazy Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame. In fact, Conrad looks like a petty thief next to disgraced trial lawyer kingpins Bill Lerach, Melvyn Weiss and Dickie Scruggs – who scored hundreds of millions in legal fees but were all recently convicted of paying kickbacks to client front-men (Lerach and Weiss) or bribing judges (Scruggs).
Last Hurrah For Tennessee’s Judicial Selection Star Chamber?
August 19, 2008
Tennessee’s Judicial Selection Commission yesterday submitted a list of three candidates it deems worthy to fill retiring Chief Justice William Barker’s seat on the state Supreme Court. How did the commissioners reach their decision? Did they weigh each applicant’s judicial temperament? Did they examine each applicant’s judicial philosophy? Did they take into account the views of Tennessee citizens who will be governed by the court’s rulings?
No one really knows, because like other states which utilize so-called “merit” selection systems, Tennessee’s panel meets in secret and is accountable to no one. Many legal scholars believe the commission is unconstitutional, since Tennessee’s Constitution clearly calls for judges to be selected by voters.
The last time around, Gov. Phil Bredesen rejected two slates of candidates as being too limited and demanded the commission submit more names before he finally settled on an appointment. Following this fiasco, Gov. Bredesen called on the commission to come out from behind closed doors and meet in public, while Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey supported legislation to make the commission more accountable to voters.
After both reform proposals were killed, the legislature failed to reauthorize the commission, which will expire next year unless it is renewed. This raises the hope that judicial selection in Tennessee may soon be returned to the people, rather than a secret committee controlled by legal special interests.
Keeping Voters Informed In Ohio
August 19, 2008
The Cleveland Plain Dealer came out with a strong editorial supporting judicial elections and a campaign rule that would let judicial candidates list their party affiliations in campaign ads – a move the paper called “a big plus for free speech, common sense and Ohio voters.”
Florida Star Chamber Lays An Egg
August 18, 2008
After weeks of sober, serious and secret deliberations, Florida’s judicial selection commission emerged from behind closed doors to present Governor Charlie Crist with its list of approved names to fill two state Supreme Court openings. Like other states that utilize so-called “merit” selection, the power to pick judges for the high court in Florida rests not with an elected governor accountable to the nearly 5 million Floridians who voted in the last election, but with an unelected committee controlled by lawyers that is accountable to no one.
For his part, Gov. Crist expressed frustration with the commission’s work, noting that he had “several concerns” about the list of names and would continue “looking at what my options are.” According to The St. Petersburg Times, while the commission could have recommended up to 12 candidates for the two openings, they only sent eight, severely limiting Gov. Crist’s options for shaping the direction of the court. In an editorial, the Times writes:
“The effect is to give the commission more control and the governor less.”
But that’s precisely the point of “merit” selection: taking power away from the people and their elected representatives and handing it to a small group of legal elites.
Not surprisingly, governors in other “merit” selection states – including Missouri and Tennessee – have also balked at being forced to swallow the dictates of judicial star chambers. But Florida’s list of candidates also raised the ire of the president of the state ACLU chapter, who pronounced herself “terribly disappoint[ed]” because the commission failed to nominate any women or African-American candidates.
Florida’s judicial selection commission has managed to produce a frustrated conservative governor, a disappointed liberal ACLU official, and an angry news media demanding it go back to the drawing board to come up with a more diverse list of nominees. So much for taking politics out of judicial selection.
James Madison, Call Your Lawyer
August 14, 2008
If you are going to engage in judicial overreaching, why not reach for it all?
The “merit-selection” movement has now entered its inevitable new phase. In a stunning rejection of more than two centuries of Constitutional advice and consent, the American Bar Association is touting a proposal that would institutionalize the role of home-state senators and that of a “bipartisan” commission, giving them equal weight to the role of the President of the United States in selecting federal judges.
In a hard-hitting editorial today The Wall Street Journal lays waste to the ABA scheme.
In its piece, The Journal quotes Bert Brandenburg, the executive director of the George Soros-supported organization, Justice At Stake:
“Judges are not politicians in robes, nor are they prizes to be won by aggressive special interests.” (For more see Gavel Grab.)
Of course this sentiment ignores the politicization of the judiciary in our time and the increasing need for public judicial accountability - which I believe is best achieved through judicial elections. Ted Frank of AEI and PointofLaw.com captured this point very well recently when he said:
“When a California Supreme Court unilaterally amends the state constitution or a Wisconsin Supreme Court announces that it will act as a super-legislature to strike down medical malpractice legislation because it disagrees with the actual legislature’s conclusions, the judiciary has ceased to act as a judicial branch, and is just another branch of government. As a first choice, I would prefer the judiciary to be a judiciary, but if it is not going to do so, then it is hard for me to see why the self-appointed philosopher-kings should not be directly answerable to the voters.”
ABA President Thomas Wells is also quoted in the WSJ editorial saying that one purpose of the ABA’s measure is to avoid “really rancorous debates” in the confirmation process. Why stop there? We could also avoid the really rancorous presidential contests that occur in this country every four years by letting a similar “bipartisan commission”—composed of all the correct people, of course—select our presidents for us.
Another way to avoid the really rancorous debates of our current era, of course, would have been for the ABA’s judicial review panel to rate judicial nominees fairly, as you would expect of a professional organization—instead of rating leading national legal scholars, like Judge Bork, as “unqualified.” But that cat has long since slipped that bag.
The Journal weighs in on the proposal for a “merit commission” composed of “lawyers and other leaders” by adding:
“But with so many modern judges bent on writing law by fiat, doctors, firemen and used car salesmen are just as qualified to opine on judicial philosophy. In fact, we’d prefer the used car salesmen.”
The ethics of marketing previously owned vehicles is not such a bad standard for ABA leaders to try live up to. After all, a few years ago such a “merit board” could easily have included John Edwards, Mel Weiss, Bill Lerach and Dickie Scruggs.
The Battle For November
August 13, 2008
Alicia Mundy of The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the politics of tort reform in today’s edition.
Mundy notes that judges are putting holds on major cases pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Wyeth v. Levine, a case to be heard on November 3. While that case is pending, Mundy describes how the pro-reform and anti-reform forces are furiously backing candidates who take opposing sides on restricting some cases to federal court, and recognizing the sovereignty of FDA and other regulatory agencies.
“It is a war,” one Houston attorney tells Mundy. Well, that part is right.
But then she reports: “Trial lawyers are expected to be heavily outspent.” Huh?
Mundy writes that the Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform intends to raise $40 million to back political candidates this year. But remember, trial lawyers have made billions of dollars from tobacco, asbestos and other settlements. This is why John Edwards can afford to live in a Dixie Versailles.
The trial lawyers’ national organization, the so-called “American Association of Justice,” is number four on OpenSecrets.org’s ranking of “Top All Time Donors” to campaigns, ahead of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Altria, the National Rifle Association and dozens more. Lawyers and law firms (defense and plaintiffs’ firms combined) contribute millions to candidates every year — $142 million so far in just this election cycle, 75% of that going to Democrats. Because there are so many of these trial bar tycoons, their money will be harder to track. But rest assured their contributions will exceed other efforts.
Putting together the myriad ways trial lawyers influence the law, of course, would be a hard task. Some would call it “investigative reporting.”
Candidate Needed In Michigan: Must Be Comfortable With Losing
August 11, 2008
John Gizzi of Human Events has a nice wrap-up piece of the political state of affairs in Michigan.
Gizzi correctly analyzes the sham Reform Michigan Government Now proposal as a power grab in the tradition of hard-left subversion, larded with enough superficial items meant to appeal to conservatives to reveal the utter cynicism of its authors.
Upholding Lincoln’s adage about the inability to fool all the people all of the time, RMGN has been condemned by Michigan Democrats and Republicans and by press around the country. So Democrats are now training their remaining ammunition on defeating Chief Justice Cliff Taylor. Here’s the fun part: The blowback from RMGN is so powerful that the Democrats can’t get anyone to run. As you’ve read here before, former Gov. James Blanchard and fellow Democrat Marietta Robinson both decided they didn’t want to run in a year in which they’d be tied to RMGN. “That leaves,” Gizzi writes, “Wayne County Circuit Judge Deborah Thomas, who raised only $28,000 in a losing bid for another Supreme Court seat in 2004.” Not satisfied with this sacrificial lamb, “Democratic party elders and union leaders” are in a “desperate search.”
For Michigan Democrats, it’s a political American Idol in which all the contestants are going to be seriously off-key.
Defendants: Take ‘Em To Trial
August 11, 2008
The New York Times reports on a study to be published in the September issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies that analyzes whether the parties in a lawsuit would be better off settling or going to trial. Being The Times, they lead with the plaintiffs’ angle—“most of the plaintiffs who decided to pass up a settlement offer and went to trial ended up getting less money than if they had taken that offer.”
Of greater importance for our point of view is the trial outcome showed that defendants were wrong to go to trial in only 24 percent of cases. (There is, however, a big, fat, greasy fly-in-this-ointment. Plaintiffs who got it wrong shelled out an average of about $43,000. Defendants who got it wrong shelled out an average of $1.1 million.)