Who’s Watching The “Watchdogs”?
November 3, 2008
Justice at Stake is out with a press release decrying the “orgy of negativity” the group believes has turned the Michigan Supreme Court campaign between Chief Justice Clifford Taylor and challenger Diane Hathaway into “the nation’s dirtiest.” (full disclosure: my wife, Colleen, is managing Chief Justice Taylor’s campaign) The group’s executive director, Bert Brandenburg, says the Michigan race represents an attempt by “special interests, political parties and an emerging class of ‘superdonors’ to pack courts with judges to their liking.”
Of course, this charge would have more credibility if it weren’t made by a group bankrolled by a “superdonor” (hedge fund billionaire George Soros) committed to turning the judicial selection process over to a single “special interest” (lawyers) in order to “pack the courts with judges to their liking” (activists who will do the bidding of the trial bar but have trouble getting elected by the people). But Justice at Stake has a point.
Yes, campaigns at all levels of government have gotten too expensive and too negative. By Justice at Stake’s estimations, for example, Barack Obama raises almost as much in a single month as every candidate for state Supreme Court has raised in the past eight years. Surely Senator Obama has turned the quest for the presidency into a “financial arms race” with a campaign “defined by runaway spending” – to use Justice at Stake’s words. Despite this fact, no one would dare suggest that Americans be deprived of their right to vote for Senator Obama tomorrow or that the job could better be handled by a committee dominated by special interests. Why should we listen to Justice at Stake when they want to do precisely the same thing with our right to vote for state judges?
You see, the real target here is not campaign spending or even negative ads – it’s elections themselves. While Justice at Stake likes to pose as a nonpartisan judicial watchdog, the group is actually waging a highly-coordinated, well-financed campaign to end democratic judicial elections in states across America and impose “merit” selection schemes – where a small tribunal controlled by lawyers meets in secret to decide who should sit on the bench.
In my view, it’s not “Justice” at stake, but Accountability that’s at stake.
In the old days, “watchdog” groups protected the people from the powerful by shining the light of public scrutiny on government actions. How ironic – and disturbing – that a self-styled “watchdog” is now dedicated to ending public scrutiny over one-third of our state governments.