PA Supreme Court Justice: Judicial Elections Don’t Affect Court
November 25, 2009
Kudos to Justice Debra Todd of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for her opinion piece that appeared this week in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As AmericanCourthouse readers know, there has been a multi-decade effort to eliminate democratic judicial elections in Pennsylvania, led chiefly by Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. PMC and others claim judicial elections politicize the courts - but Justice Todd, elected to the PA Supreme Court in 2007 as a Democrat, is having none of it…
“…while a candidate running for an opening on the Supreme Court does so as a Republican or a Democrat, a justice is not beholden to any party and the assertion of political control of the court is simply incongruous…[A] judge is elected to interpret and apply the law of the commonwealth in accordance with the Pennsylvania and United States constitutions. While the casual observer may believe that because we elect judges in our commonwealth politics control our judiciary, nothing could be further from the truth. Just as Lady Justice does not permit a voter registration card to tip her scales, it should be clearly understood that no political party controls the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.”
Thanks to JudgesonMerit for brining this to our attention. You can find their spirited, opposing view here.
Lawyers Get Greenbacks, People Get Pinkslips
November 23, 2009
A new report out of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse found that California’s eight largest city and county governments have forked over more than $500 million in the past two years to pay verdicts, settlements and legal fees. As the head of one county taxpayer advocacy group put it in the Bakersfield Californian:
“It is outrageous that people are losing their jobs and government services are being severely cut at the same time that nearly half a billion dollars of our tax money is going toward litigation costs….Every dollar that taxpayers have to spend defending lawsuits is money lost for critical services such as public safety and infrastructure improvements.”
If it’s costing $500 million to feed the litigation beast in just eight California cities and counties, can anyone imagine what the bill for taxpayers nationwide?
No Merit In Ohio
November 23, 2009
According to the Columbus Dispatch, a small group of legal elites – including the Chief Justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court and the president of the Ohio Bar – got together last week to discuss the best way to select judges in Ohio. Guess what? They think legal elites should have more control – people like themselves, in fact.
When asked, 78 percent said they would support a ballot provision abolishing democratic judicial elections and replacing them with “merit” selection – where elites pick judges and voters are shut out of the process. Sounds impressive – until you hear there were only about 50 people in the room.
Nevertheless, this pseudo-scientific “poll” perfectly captures the condescending mindset behind the “merit” selection crowd. Fifty elites gather at a swanky hotel and inform roughly 8.2 million Ohio voters that their participation in deciding who will control one-third of their state government is no longer needed.
New Report: An Empire Disaster
November 20, 2009
Earlier this week the New York Daily News ran a great op-ed co-authored by Lawrence McQuillan of the Pacific Research Institute and Mark Kriss, head of New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform. The piece describes how lawsuit abuse is harming New York state’s economy and how trial lawyers and their friends in the state legislature are blocking attempts to stop the abuse.
Just what would legal reform mean for New York? Money quote:
…if such reforms were put in place, New York would create at least 86,000 new jobs, increase state output $17 billion annually, boost state tax revenues by more than $1 billion a year, raise the income of every New Yorker by more than $2,600 a year, attract new customers and entrepreneurs to the state and cut insurance premiums up to 16% per annum.
For more, read the terrific report that PRI just released, “An Empire Disaster.”
Is the Fix in on Jerry Brown’s ACORN Investigation?
November 19, 2009
Will California Attorney General Jerry Brown charge ACORN for attempting to help set up a brothel and “smuggle Mexican girls across the border to work as prostitutes,” a San Francisco Chronicle article asks? Or will Brown prosecute the filmmakers who uncovered ACORN?s scandalous behavior?
Clearly ACORN believes it has a pipeline to the AG. A top ACORN official told a Democratic Club meeting last month:
“The attorney general is a political animal as well. Every bit of communication we’ve had with (Brown’s office) has suggested that fault will be found with the people that did the video and not with ACORN.”
You can hear it for yourself on Andrew Breitbart’s biggovernment.com.
A cynic might conclude ACORN was offering to help Brown?s gubernatorial campaign in advance of the June primary. But then again, ACORN has given us a lot of reasons to be cynical about the organization recently.
For his part, Brown has long been an ACORN promoter, and the group was instrumental in his political resurrection, running voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in his campaigns for Oakland mayor and AG, according to an American Spectator report.
Oh, and Brown?s office declined to investigate Brown?s own spokesman, who admitted to secretly recording conversations with journalists.
Can anyone say “conflict of interest?”
The new Jerry Brown isn’t any different than the old Jerry Brown. Back then he was known as Governor Moonbeam. Today, this ACORN apologist is just a NUT.
Michigan Court Power Grab
November 19, 2009
Today’s Detroit News published an article I wrote to shine the light on the latest power grab attempt by Michigan’s liberal Supreme Court justices. You can read it here.
Federal Appointment for Louis Butler: More “Open Defiance” of Wisconsin Voters
November 19, 2009
As American Courthouse readers will recall, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler was unceremoniously dumped by Wisconsin voters last April – the first sitting justice to lose his/her seat in four decades, a terrific Wall Street Journal editorial tells us. His reward for being the favorite martyr of the trial bar/”merit” selection crowd? A lifetime appointment to the federal bench by President Obama.
Butler’s defeat was hardly surprising; in 2000, Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly rejected him by a 2:1 margin. Governor Jim Doyle’s decision to go ahead and appoint Butler to the court anyway “overturned the clear results of the election,” wrote Charles Sykes for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and was in “open defiance” of the wishes of the people of Wisconsin.
Now, as the Journal points out, Wisconsin voters “will have years to contend with the decisions of a judge they made clear they would rather live without.” Earlier decisions by Justice Butler included rulings that “dismantled” Wisconsin’s medical liability reform and invented crackpot new theories opening innocent businesses to more abusive litigation. No wonder he was thrown out.
The Journal notes that Butler’s nomination shows “contempt for Wisconsin voters,” which is certainly true. It also signals that when it comes to the Obama Administration’s judicial nominations, special interest groups like the trial bar and the American Bar Association will be calling the shots.
Butler’s April 2008 defeat kicked off a national debate over judicial elections. The election results were used by the ABA and the trial bar in a push to end democratic state judicial elections and replace them with so-called “merit selection” committees. Wisconsin continues to support judicial elections and many in the state see the ABA for what it is: the last group the American people should put its faith in to produce fair jurists. It has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for the left…and that’s not right.
Judge Says Merit Selection = “Marketing, Pure and Simple”
November 17, 2009
“Merit” selection schemes are “just marketing, pure and simple” and won’t produce better judges, says West Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Brent Benjamin in an interview with the West Virginia Record.
“Let people pick their judges. It makes sense. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, a state afraid to let its people vote is a state afraid of its people. The notion that people can’t be trusted to have a say in government … that is really sad. Certainly elections can be tough, but I have confidence in people. Give them the information and believe in them….Part of a democracy is having a choice.”
In an era where many legal elites, such as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, believe the power to choose judges should be taken away from voters and handed over to lawyer-dominated tribunals, it’s refreshing to hear one of our public servants on the bench stand up for the rights of ordinary citizens.
A Gift to the Trial Bar
November 13, 2009
A Wall Street Journal editorial uncovers a golden nugget for the Trial Lawyers Inc. in Senator Chris Dodd’s new financial regulatory bill.
The Dodd bill “would create new civil liability for anyone ‘aiding and abetting’ those who violate the securities law, making these new defendants just as liable as people who actually commit a fraud.” This provision “would essentially overturn the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in Stonebridge v. Scientific-Atlanta” and allow companies that acted legally to be sued merely for doing business with another company that committed fraud.
The most recent Quinnipiac poll shows Dodd trailing his 2010 election opponent by 11 points. According to The Center for Responsive Politics’ invaluable opensecrets.org, lawyers/law firms are the #2 contributors to Dodd’s campaign, having funneled over $1.7 million into his re-election campaign. Is this most recent sop to the trial bar a plea for more $$$? Draw your own conclusions.
ACORN on the Ropes
November 13, 2009
Politico reports today on a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo that claims ACORN may “be ready to file for bankruptcy.” The ranking minority member on the Committee is Congressman Darrell Issa, who has led the congressional investigation into ACORN’s corrupt practices.
According to the memo:
“… the three main offices of ACORN are engaged in a ‘civil war’ and CEO Bertha Lewis has taken custody of hundreds of bank accounts with fund totaling roughly $20 million, in order to consolidate assets.”
You can access Congressman Issa’s July report, “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured as a Criminal Enterprise?” here.
In a separate article, Politico also reports that ACORN has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that bills passed by the House and Senate to defund the group are unconstitutional.
I’m not making this up.
ACORN’s complaint cites the loss of $1 million in FEMA funding and $780,000 from the EPA among others, which has forced the group to fire employees and shutter offices. ACORN’s arrogance is already legendary, but its claim of a constitutional right to suck money out of American taxpayers raises this conceit to a whole new level.