Blame the People
January 4, 2012
According to a recent Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, a Philadelphia Traffic Court judge is alleged to have promised to dismiss traffic tickets in exchange for campaign cash. If that weren’t enough, he also passed around naked pictures of himself to female city employees. What do you think? Is this an example of a sleazeball who, if the charges are true, can easily be permanently removed from office by the Court of Judicial Discipline? Not according to the “merit” selection crowd. No! It’s an indictment of democracy itself! It’s Exhibit A in why the people cannot be trusted to choose their public servants! Or, as Shira Goodman of the George Soros-financed Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts solemnly puts it, “judicial elections are not the way” to pick judges.
But wait a minute. Didn’t New Mexico Representative Dennis Kintigh just write an oped detailing a long catalogue of ethical abuses that “have diminished and tarnished the reputation and standing” of the judiciary in that state? Allegations involving judges chosen under “merit” selection? Incidents including gross violations of individual rights, drunk driving charges, possession of cocaine and “cavorting with a prostitute”?
As I wrote at the time, the “merit” selection crowd likes to claim that judges chosen under their system have a monopoly on virtue. But the examples from Pennsylvania and New Mexico show that judges are human – just like any other public servant.
Shira Goodman’s hopes notwithstanding, judges do not become angels simply because they are chosen in secret by a small committee dominated by legal special interest groups. Her attempt to blame one judge’s ethical transgressions on the people who voted him into office demonstrates both the contempt the “merit” selection crowd has for ordinary citizens and the reason why “merit” selection has never caught on in Pennsylvania.
At it Again in Pennsylvania
April 28, 2011
It takes a special kind of courage to speak truth to power. Like Lynn Marks of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts showed the other day when she told a “special committee” of the Pennsylvania Bar Association that lawyers such as themselves deserve a privileged place when it comes to choosing judges because ordinary voters too often make an “uninformed decision.” OK, so maybe it wasn’t such a profile in courage after all.
Marks’ appearance was part of a well-funded campaign by her group aimed at stripping Pennsylvanians of their right to choose judges – a right enshrined in the state constitution – and then turning the job over to a commission comprised of legal heavyweights with a few laypersons thrown in for window dressing. They’ve been pushing this line for about 20 years now, with little success. Those “uninformed” voters keep getting in the way.
Elections Have Consequences: Taking Back our Courts from Trial Lawyers Inc.
December 8, 2010
Newly elected governors in Pennsylvania and Florida are counting on strong Republican majorities in their legislatures to quickly push through meaningful tort reform early next year.
In Pennsylvania, Governor-elect Tom Corbett has called on the GOP majority in both houses to deliver a bill within six months. One key reform: reinstating Pennsylvania’s Fair Share Act, which modified abusive liability rules that allowed plaintiffs’ lawyers to hold a defendant liable for 100 percent of any damage award even if that defendant was only responsible for 1 percent of an injury. Corbett has also called for an end to venue shopping, which allowed trial lawyers to file claims in tort-friendly jurisdictions. Business groups such as the NFIB and Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association are rallying behind the plan.
In Florida, William Large of the Florida Justice Reform Institute says the election of a Republican supermajority has created a “tremendous opportunity” to pass legislation bottled up for years by the state’s trial bar and its former allies in the legislature. One bill likely on the fast track is a common sense measure that would allow a jury to apportion fault among all responsible parties, not just corporate defendants. As Jose Gonzalez of Associated Industries of Florida told one reporter:
“It’s a fairness issue. Right now, a jury [in an auto liability case] only heard about a faulty seat belt or bad roof. They don’t hear that the driver was on 10 different kinds of drugs and ran off the road.”
Elections have consequences – and it seems one message voters sent this November is that it’s time to take back our courts from Trial Lawyers Inc.
Give Me Pennsylvania Judges Over Iraqi Judges Any Day
July 19, 2010
Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer prints an op-ed by a law student arguing that Pennsylvania has a lot to learn from Iraq – yes, Iraq – when it comes to selecting judges.
In Pennsylvania, you see, judges are chosen by ordinary citizens in open, democratic elections. How backward and benighted!
Iraq, on the other hand, is blessed to have a judicial selection system created in large part, we’re told, by “U.S. State Department officials.” Read more
Support the People, Not the Elites in Pennsylvania
July 13, 2010
In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed, Professor John Kennedy of La Salle University invites us to “jump down the rabbit hole … and imagine a world where U.S. Supreme Court justices” are elected democratically. (Hat tip to JudgesOnMerit.) He then goes on to catalogue the alleged horrors of democracy – too much campaign cash, nasty TV ads, etc.
But here’s a more interesting mental exercise. Why don’t we “jump down the rabbit hole” and consider what would happen if U.S. Supreme Court justices were chosen by “merit” selection, as Professor Kennedy proposes. Read more
Democratic Elections “Under Assault” In PA
June 18, 2010
Nathan Shrader of pa2010.com summarizes Pennsylvania voter attitudes regarding the effort in that state to, in Shrader’s words, “eliminat[e] the ability of Pennsylvania voters to choose their judges.”
Shrader lists the following stats demonstrating overwhelming voter opposition to so-called “merit” selection:
- A poll commissioned by Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts found that 75 percent of Pennsylvanians feel that “merit” selection could make the judiciary more political than it is today. Almost 70 percent believe that judicial selection takes power from the public and places it in the hands of “politicians and trial lawyers.”
- A Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy poll in September 2009 found that 72 percent of Pennsylvanians favored continuing to elect their Supreme Court judges while just 21 percent would support a nominating commission.
- An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll conducted nationally in 2006 found that voters across the nation favored election over selection, as “nearly 65 percent of Americans want to elect those who sit on the bench,” according to their results.
Shrader believes “the big wigs and moneyed interests are lining up to rob the people of their voice in determining those who may one day sit in judgment of us, our families, or our rights.” That’s right: When insiders choose, the people lose.
“Merit” Nonsense in Pennsylvania
June 17, 2010
The editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are foaming at the mouth because a bill they support that aims to strip Pennsylvanians of their right to vote for judges – a right enshrined in Pennsylvania’s Constitution – is being held up by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Tom Caltagirone. But the people of Pennsylvania should be thankful that at least one legislator is willing to stand up for their democratic rights.
In its snarky attack on Rep. Caltagirone, the Post-Gazette starkly reveals all the arrogance and condescension of the “merit” selection movement. Powerful elites support it, so who is one little legislator to stand in their way? Democratic judicial elections are just a “lottery” anyway because voters just pick the candidate with a “famous name.” Retention elections are good enough for voters – never mind that fact that judges standing for retention lose about as often as the old Soviet Politburo members.
The Post-Gazette asks “what possible harm could there be in letting lawmakers vote for something that must be endorsed or rejected by the public?” Here’s an answer: In a poll released by “merit” selection’s own supporters, 75% of Pennsylvanians said “merit” selection won’t take politics out of judicial selection and could even make the selection of judges “more political.” (Question 36) And nearly 7 out of 10 say “merit” selection transfers the power to choose judges from voters to “politicians and trial lawyers.” (Question 37)
Pennsylvanians instinctively understand that “merit” selection is really just a rigged game to put control of judicial selection in the hands of special interests. If this proposal makes it to the ballot, these special interests will spend millions upon millions to make sure that the process for choosing judges in Pennsylvania will be “one man, one vote, one time.”
A Profile In Courage in Pennsylvania
June 15, 2010
It takes courage for any politician to stand up against elite opinion. It takes even more courage when that elite opinion is backed up by powerful special interests and the checking account of billionaire hedge fund tycoon George Soros. So I’m pleased to announce that the First Annual American Courthouse Award for Distinguished Public Service goes to Pennsylvania State Representative Tom Caltagirone, a Democrat from Reading, PA. Read more
75% of Pennsylvanians say “Merit” Selection Could Make Judicial Selection “More Political”
June 10, 2010
Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (PMC) – a group funded by billionaire hedge fund titan George Soros – is trumpeting a new poll that purports to show broad public support among Pennsylvania voters for replacing democratic elections with a “merit” selection system for choosing judges. But what the poll really demonstrates is the extent to which the “merit” selection crowd will go to manipulate polling data to suit its ideological ends.
PMC claims on their blog, for example, that 93% of Pennsylvanians “want the opportunity to vote on whether Pennsylvanians should change the way we select” judges. Sounds impressive. But in the PMC poll, respondents are asked this question only after three other “questions” (see #s 41, 42 and 43) describing recent judicial scandals in Pennsylvanians. In politics, this technique is called “push polling” – a device used to manipulate public opinion, rather than illicit it. Besides, who is going to say they don’t want the “opportunity to vote” on almost any question? Read more
JudgesOnMerit Discovers Sand in the Sahara!
May 7, 2010
OK, so someone must have hacked into the computers over at JudgesOnMerit and posted a parody. How else to explain the breathless headline – “Merit Lives!” – over a post bragging about the budding support for “merit” selection from “unlikely sources” such as … drum roll please … trial lawyers! Who knew!?
At the risk of playing the straight man to those jokers, I guess I should point out the obvious: The reason trial lawyers love “merit” selection is because it gives them a seat (or two or three or four) at the table when the doors close and the secret meetings begin and legal elites get down to the business of picking judges.
In some states, trial lawyers don’t just have seats at the table - they own the table itself.
Take Missouri, for example. In that birthplace of “merit” selection, four of the seven members of the state’s “merit” board have ties to the Missouri trial lawyer association. Up until recently, in Tennessee 75 percent of the “merit” commissioners by law came from legal special interest groups like the Tennessee trial lawyers association.
Maybe it just took Pennsylvania trial lawyers longer than their peers in other states to figure out that “merit” selection is a rigged game that puts them in the driver’s seat when it comes to picking judges.