New Jersey’s Kryptonite Governor
May 5, 2010
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie isn’t content to take on just the state’s powerful teachers’ union and the entrenched, bloated bureaucracy that leeches off New Jersey’s over-burdened taxpayers. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, Christie is battling the legislature and the legal establishment in order to rein in a “liberal and activist” Supreme Court. Is this guy made of kryptonite or something?
Under New Jersey’s Constitution, the Governor appoints Supreme Court justices “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Governor Christie wants to dump one justice whose term is up and replace him with an Ivy League-educated lawyer named Anne Patterson who cut her teeth defending against toxic tort suits and other trial lawyer boondoggles. It’s part of his plan to reshape a court he considers “too liberal and activist.”
But Senate President Stephen Sweeney does not consent. He prefers New Jersey’s long-standing, clubby tradition whereby any justice who wants to warm his seat for another seven years is automatically reappointed.
As Christie interprets it, New Jersey’s Constitution “clearly states that all justices of the Supreme Court are appointed to an initial seven-year term – not automatic lifetime tenure.”
Who will win the showdown? I’m betting on Governor Kryptonite.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: New Jersey
2 Responses to “New Jersey’s Kryptonite Governor”
[...] Paul Mulshine’s excellent item from earlier this week is a must-read for those following Governor Kryptonite’s (AKA Gov. Chris Christie) effort to reform the New Jersey Supreme Court. Gov. Christie declined to re-appoint liberal justice John Wallace to the state Supreme Court — promptly setting all of New Jersey’s judicial activists a-clucking. (I’ve written about this here and here.) [...]
[...] on the Gov. Christie’s efforts to reform the NJ Supreme Court here and [...]