Oops…Will “Merit” Selection Supporters Apologize For Smearing Louisiana Judges?
September 25, 2008
Proponents of ending state judicial elections and switching to “merit” selection argue that such a drastic curtailment of democracy is necessary because campaign contributions allow donors to “buy” favorable verdicts. They’ve never had any actual proof – just manufactured public opinion polls that suggest a public “perception” that campaign money unduly influences judges. So when a Tulane University law professor and a Loyola University economics professor published an article in Tulane’s law review earlier this year that smeared several Louisiana Supreme Court justices by claiming that contributions swayed their votes, the anti-election crowd pounced.
The New York Times ran a huge article pronouncing the results of the professors’ study “not pretty” and sneered that at least on Louisiana’s court campaign cash trumped judicial philosophy when it came to making decisions. Judges on Merit hailed the study in a blog post entitled, “Louisiana Study Confirms that Money Can Buy Verdicts,” and wrote that the study shows that in Louisiana “campaign contributions to judges are a good way to get an advantage in the courtroom.” Gavel Grab (Justice at Stake’s blog) also reported on the study.
There’s only one problem. The Tulane study turned out to be bogus. It was so deeply flawed that Tulane Law School Dean Lawrence Ponoroff was forced to send a letter to every Justice on Louisiana’s Supreme Court apologizing for the “faulty data” used to reach “conclusions [that have] been called into question.”
Among the flaws turned up by independent reviewers:
- “the study relied on just 186 decisions out of the thousands reviewed in 16 years of data” by the study’s authors.
- “in 37 of the 186 opinions included in the study, the information about the case on which [the authors] based their conclusions is just plain wrong, such as how a justice voted or even if the justice was on the panel that decided the case.”
- Independent reviews “also presented a litany of other study criticisms, including the lack of factual or legal analysis of any single case and a lack of evidence that any case was decided incorrectly.”
Justice John Weimer was gracious enough to accept the dean’s apology, but not before pointing out that:
What is so disappointing about this is the damage that has been done to the state of Louisiana unjustifiably. This irresponsible article becomes a tool for those who benefit from such unwarranted attacks on our state’s reputation.
And what about the partisans that were all too anxious to exploit this “tool?” The New York Times published a short, grudging “editor’s note” containing a non-apology apology to the Louisiana justices unfairly smeared by the faulty study. And Judges on Merit and Gavel Grab? Well, we haven’t heard from them yet.