judgesonmerit.org

The Wednesday front page of the Wall Street Journal featured a story on plaintiffs’ law firms making campaign contributions to political candidates with the intent of securing post-election government business. Here’s how it works: firms (including certain PA firms) give large amounts of money to state and local political candidates. If elected, those public officials tap those firms to represent state and local pension funds in shareholder class-action lawsuits. It’s all legal, but many in the legal world, including former Clinton administration Justice Department official Robert Litan, feel it smacks of “pay-to-play” political bargaining and creates an appearance of impropriety. Litan, now at the Brookings Institution said,

It shouldn’t be the case that plaintiffs’ lawyers should make contributions to public officials and turn around and get legal business from them. You want the best lawyer, not the one with the biggest campaign checkbook.

Many lawyers echo this sentiment. Said one D.C. partner, “There are certain places where, to be in the game, you have to donate…[but] we want to be chosen on merit, not because we contributed money.”

In Pennsylvania, where judges are chosen in contested partisan elections, a similar form of self-interested back-scratching takes place. Judicial candidates receive campaign contributions from (among others) lawyers and law firms—the same parties that are likely to come before that judge if he or she is elected. The result—real or perceived—is the diminishment of impartiality in our courtrooms.

The American Bar Association suggests that firms that have made campaign contributions should not accept “government assignments.” If this is the case, what then of Pennsylvania’s own practices? When judges have received money from litigants, it fosters doubt that he or she will be able to make a fair decision. 

Pennsylvanians cannot be fully confident in their judges unless money is taken out of the judicial selection process. The best way to accomplish this is to do away with judicial elections altogether in lieu of a merit selection process. The WSJ has highlighted the national problem of lawyer/law firm campaign donations. Pennsylvania should take note of how this issue affects our own system, and reevaluate the way in which our judges reach the bench.

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