judgesonmerit.org

In a feature on campaign financing, Chicago Tribune correspondent Tim Jones notes that special interest groups are spending millions of dollars on state Supreme Court races, “with the intent of electing justices who will advance or protect their financial interests.” Jones summarizes the fallout from increasingly expensive, partisan contests in Wisconsin, West Virginia and Illinois, and discusses the effect this dramatically increased spending has on the appearance of judicial impartiality.

Nationally, spending for Supreme Court races was $165 million during the 1999-2007 election cycles, up from $62 million over the previous decade, according to the Justice at Stake Campaign. There has long been discomfort in legal circles about judges seeking election to the bench, given the potential appearance of judges being beholden to campaign contributors with matters before the court. As the number of multimillion-dollar court campaigns grow, those fears are taking shape.

As contributions to judicial campaigns increase, fundraising prowess is quickly becoming a critical skill for an aspiring judge. Because the bulk of these campaign funds come from lawyers and organizations that often litigate in state courts, the public is left to wonder if campaign cash has an influence on judicial rulings. It’s time to eliminate fundraising and campaign contributions from the judicial selection process. The best way to do that is to switch to Merit Selection.

One of the big reasons we need Merit Selection is to get money and fundraising out of the process of picking appellate judges. How much do these elections cost? Last year four candidates running for two open seats on the Pa. Supreme Court raised $7.85 million. That’s a record in Pennsylvania. And, much of that money came from lawyers, law firms, and organizations — like unions and business organizations — that often have cases in the appellate courts.

This is a problem because in Pennsylvania (and other states) judges don’t have to step aside (”recuse” in legal terms) in cases where the parties or lawyers gave money to help them get elected. That means that a judge can make the decision in a case that involves a lawyer or party who gave money, even a lot of money, to his or her election campaign.

This is a key cause of the increasingly widespread public belief that campaign contributions affect decisions made in the courtroom. This is not a problem unique to Pennsylvania. Illinois, Wisconsin, and West Virginia have all recently been in the news because of cases involving big donors to Supreme Court justices’ campaigns.

We think the solution is to get judges out of the fundraising business. The best way to do this is Merit Selection.