judgesonmerit.org

Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts today announced that the 2009 Supreme Court election between Republican Joan Orie Melvin (the winning candidate) and Democrat Jack Panella is likely to set new fundraising and spending records.  The final numbers are not yet in, as candidates can continue to raise funds until the end of the year.  But we can now report that the Supreme Court election cost at least $4.5 million, and PMC believes the total is significantly higher.

PMC’s press release documents fundraising and spending by the candidates’ campaigns, but notes that although they together raised and spent over $3.6 million, that is not the whole money story.  Instead, we found it necessary to research who else was spending money on the election.

The answer was political bodies, incuding the state Republican Party, the state Democratic Party, and the Republican Senate Committee.  In fact, the state Republican Party directly funded Judge Orie Melvin’s television campaign, to the tune of at least $975,849.  This means the state Party outspent the candidate’s own campaign.

Reports also reveal that from January 1, 2009 until November 23, 2009, the state Republican Party spent at least four million more and the state Democratic Party spent close to $2 million. Although the parties were not required to identify the candidates on whom they spent money, it seems reasonable to assume that a good portion of that six million dollars was directed to the Supreme Court election.

Pennsylvania had the nation’s most expensive Supreme Court elections in the 2007-08 election cycle, and the available data is leading elections experts to predict that Pennsylvania will again earn that title for 2009-10.   As PMC’s Lynn Marks explained, “Pennsylvanians should not take pride in leading the nation in spending for judicial elections.  Each dollar raised and spent raises yet another doubt in voters’ minds about whether or not justice is for sale.”

Bills:

• House Bill 1619 and House Bill 1621

News and Press:

• Philadelphia Inquirer: House urged to end election of Pa. judges, Amy Worden. Lynn Marks quoted.
• WHYY: Pa. having doubts on wisdom of electing judges, Scott Detrow. Robert Heim, PMC Chairman, quoted.
• PR Newswire: Governor Rendell Endorses Judicial Merit Selection Reform Bill
• Capitolwire (Subscription Required): House committee weighs benefits of appointing appellate judges, Laura Olson. Lynn Marks quoted.

Blogs and Opinions:

• Gavel Grab: Merit Selection Urged at Pa. Hearing; JAS Submits Pa. Testimony on Merit Selection
• It’s Our Money Blog/ Philly.com: Rendell pushes for merit selection of judges

And of course, read our take on the hearing here.

We will post more comprehensive coverage of the hearing, including transcripts of testimonies, within the next few days.

On Monday, the Courts Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the pending Merit Selection legislation.  Representative Josh Shapiro (D, Montgomery) chaired the hearing in Subcommittee Chair Don Walko’s (D, Allegheny) absence. Also attending were Minority Subcommittee Chair Tom Creighton (R, Lancaster), bill sponsor Matt Smith (D, Allegheny), Mike Vereb (R, Montgomery), Joseph Petrarca (D, Armstrong), Kathy Manderino (D, Philadelphia and Montgomery), Kate Harper (R, Montgomery), Glen Grell (R, Cumberland) and Deberah Kula (D, Fayette and Westmoreland).

The hearing was very informative.  Nearly all who testified — both those who supported the legislation and those who opposed it in some way — agreed that there are problems with the current electoral system, notably the role of money in the process.  This consensus is significant and reflects the public’s belief in the corrupting influence of money in the process.

Testifying on behalf of the legislation were PMC and PMCAction’s Bob Heim, Lynn Marks and Shira Goodman; Dave Taylor of the Pennsylvania Manufacturer’s Association; and Charlotte Glauser of the League of Women Voters of PA.  J. Whyatt Mondesire of the NAACP was scheduled to present testimony in support of Merit Selection but was unable to attend.

In the next few days, we will upload copies of the testimony presented at the hearing, but we offer a few highlights.  Bob Heim, Chair of PMC, focused on the need for reform and the importance of getting judges out of the fundraising business. He highlighted the public’s growing concern that money can influence judicial decisionmaking and called on the legislature to allow Pennsylvanians to decide whether to change the way we select appellate court judges.

Charlotte Glauser of the League of Women Voters of PA explained the League’s long standing support for Merit Selection, urging “Passage of these bills will do much to restore the public image of independence of Pennsylvania’s appellate court system.”

PMA’s Dave Taylor explained that Merit Selection would “improve the professionalism, integrity, and independence of the judicial branch of goverment.” Taylor explained:

By combining elements of elective and appointive systems for nominating our appellate court judges, Pennsylvania can uphold the professionalism of the courts and protect our jurists from the conflicts of interest that inevitably arise from political fundraising and campaigning.

Testifying in opposition were Tom Foley III of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice (formerly the Pennsylvania Association of Trial Lawyers), Professor Michael Dimino of Widener University, and Rick Bloomingdale, Secretary Treasuer of the AFL-CIO.  Professor Dimino actually endorsed a Merit Selection for the Superior and Commonwealth Courts and even for the trial level courts, but argued against Merit Selection for the Supreme Court.

Rick Bloomingdale of the AFL-CIO noted the organization’s current opposition to the legislation, but expressed a willingness to support an amended version of a Merit Selection plan. This is significant, and we are hopeful that as the Committee considers the bill, we can work with our traditional partners and with groups such as the AFL-CIO to design the best system of judicial selection for the Pennsylvania appellate courts.

In a publicly released letter to bill sponsor Matt Smith, Governor Rendell again expressed his strong support for Merit Selection:

I have said on many occasions that our system of electing appellate judges makes no sense. It is no secret that there is great concern in Pennsylvania about the role of money in judicial elections. Current law could allow judicial candidates to accept indirect contributions from lawyers and special interest groups that may eventually have to argue a case before that judicial candidate. It is no wonder that Pennsylvanians have been losing faith in our courts and our judges.

PMC and PMCAction are grateful to the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Courts for the opportunity to present public testimony at yesterday’s hearing. We thank the bill sponsors, Representatives Smith and Will Gabig (R, Cumberland), for their leadership as well as all the representatives who attended the hearing.  We look forward to working together to achieve a better way for Pennsylvanians to select appellate court judges.

On Monday December 7, the Courts Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the pending Merit Selection legislation.  The hearing will be at 10:00 am in Room G50, Irvis Office, Capitol Building.

Testifying in support of implementing a Merit Selection system for the Pennsylvania appellate courts will be Robert Heim, Lynn Marks and Shira Goodman of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts and PMCAction, J. Whyatt Mondesire of the NAACP, Dave Taylor of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association and Charlotte Glauser of the League of Women Voters of PA.

The hearing is the first step in the process of moving forward with legislation to amend the constitution.  We hope this process will allow Pennsylvanians to have an important dialogue about whether we should change the way we select appellate court judges.

We know from polls and surveys and from low voter turn-out that there is great concern about the role of money in judicial elections.  We also know that Pennsylvanians have been losing confidence in our courts and judges.  We believe Merit Selection — which focuses on getting the most qualified, fair and impartial judges on the appellate courts and gets judges out of the fundraising business — will be a significant factor in restoring public confidence in our courts.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell began a 3-month tour of the state in which he is calling for sweeping changes, intended to overhaul the notoriously broken political process in the state.  Appropriately, the Governor began his education campaign in Luzerne County, where judicial corruption of an unprecedented scale has damaged the public’s confidence in government at all levels, but particularly in the judiciary.

One of the three core-changes the Governor is targeting to purge corruption from state politics is to switch to merit selection of appellate court judges. Speaking to various audiences, including the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader editorial board, the Scranton Chamber of Commerce, and students at Wilkes University, the Governor highlighted two of the serious flaws with our current system of judicial selection: confusion in the voting booth, and money. The Times-Leader reported:

‘People don’t have a clue who they are voting for,’ Rendell said. ‘In an exit poll conducted five years ago, voters were asked five minutes after they voted to name any of the judicial candidates they voted for, and 50 percent couldn’t remember one.’”

Rendell also criticized political campaign donations to judges. ‘Who gives money to judicial candidates? It’s lawyers, for the most part,’ he said.”

The antidote the Governor proposed is to put qualified judges on the bench through a system of merit selection, where they will be untainted by the corrupting influence of money that Luzernites are, unfortunately, all too familiar with.

This message was music to the ears of Lynn Marks and Shira Goodman of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (PMC), an organization which has long been calling for Pennsylvania to adopt merit selection for the appellate courts. As PMC’s Lynn Marks explained:

‘Merit selection focuses on getting the most qualified candidates on the bench, offers an opportunity for qualified men and women of all backgrounds from all over Pennsylvania to serve and gets judges out of the fundraising business.’”

The other changes proposed in the Governor’s plan are to implement campaign-finance reform for elected politicians to limit the influence of lobbyists on the state’s lawmakers, and to prevent incumbent legislators from maintaining their power through absurd reapportionment of voting districts.

You will recall that in the just-passed race for a vacant seat on the state’s Supreme Court, vast sums of money were spent on negative advertising. According to many commentators, the race was particularly important to the political parties this year because of the reapportionment issue. In a state like ours, where judges hang party labels after their names (we are one of 6 states that elect judges at all levels in partisan elections), the Supreme Court’s role in deciding contested reapportionment questions becomes a political question and Supreme Court elections become tempting targets for the influence of big money.

We are delighted that Governor Rendell is bringing the problems with electing judges front and center, and think there is no better place to launch this message than a county that has felt first-hand what hell can be wrought by judges tainted by the influence of money.

The Harrisburg Patriot-News featured an op-ed by PMC’s Lynn Marks and Shira Goodman this weekend. The op-ed opens with a question about the money spent in the election — millions by the candidates and perhaps millions more by political parties and other third-party special interests:

Only 20 percent of registered voters voted for a Supreme Court candidate. So, what did that money buy? Diminishing public confidence in our court system.

Marks and Goodman go on to explain the problems caused by the role of money in the electoral process and the inability of the recusal system to address these problems.

Marks and Goodman conclude, “The solution to the problem of money and judges is to get money out of the judicial selection system. The only way to do that effectively is to change the way we pick appellate judges.”  They explain why other proposals, such as campaign finance reform or public financing, would not be as effective “because both maintain the role of money in the selection process.”

The real solution is Merit Selection.  “With a merit selection system, appellate court candidates don’t have to raise money from those who are likely to appear before them. This results in public confidence in the process and trust that the scales of justice are in balance. And, that, in the words of that Mastercard commercial, “is priceless.””

This is the opening for Sunday’s op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Lynn Marks and Shira Goodman of PMC:

The O’Jays famously sang, “Money, money, money, money. Some people got to have it. Hey, hey, hey. Some people really need it.” This is certainly true of statewide judicial candidates in Pennsylvania.

Marks and Goodman explain that to run a state-wide campaign requires a lot of money, and the money usually comes from lawyers, lawfirms, unions and businesses that frequently litigate in the state appellate court system. “They give because they care about who runs the courts in which they pursue their interests.” The op-ed goes on to explain why this seemingly logical scenario creates problems: it creates a perception that campaign contributions affect decision-making in the courtroom.

The abiding symbol of our courts is the statue of Justice blindfolded, signifying that judges should not be swayed by personal bias, popular opinion, political expediency or the identity of the parties appearing before them. A judge’s personal relationships and political connections should have no influence on how cases are decided. Electing judges undermines this image. The public perceives a judge with eyes wide open, pockets bulging with campaign cash and knowledge of where the cash came from.

Even though the vast majority of judges are sincere when they explain that campaign contributions don’t affect how they decide cases, the public understandably has trouble believing this. It looks like justice is for sale to the biggest campaign contributors.

Marks and Goodman then explain that the current Supreme Court race — with the candidates running an ad war and fighting about who took contributions from what entity — is only confirming for the public the poisonous influence of money in the judicial selection system.  There is only one answer: “Enough is enough. It’s time to get judges out of the fund-raising business and to put the blindfold back on. The way to achieve this is to stop electing appellate court judges.”

As the Caperton decision continues to make waves around the country, an article in the Bucks County Courier Times highlights its impact in our region.  The context is the current judicial election contest in Bucks County.  (PMC and PMCAction do not endorse or support any judicial candidates, but we report about campaign activities or candidate statements that are relevant to our work).

Dave Zellis, one of four candidates in the race for the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, is rejecting campaign contributions from lawyers.  His opponents have declined to match this move, and Zellis has faced criticism for having contributed to judicial campaigns himself in the past, but Zellis feels vindicated by the Caperton decision.  Responding to criticism from his opponents’ supporters that the Supreme Court wasn’t sufficiently precise in defining “substantial donations,” Zellis countered:

How do you define a substantial donation. . . . To the average resident trying to make a living in this economy, $100 is substantial. This perception that judges expect something in return from the lawyers standing before them in court-even if that’s not true-gives the justice system a bad name. It has to stop.

That perception of impropriety lies at the heart of the Caperton decision and underscores a fundamental problem of judicial elections-whether the donation is $3 million or $30, it creates the perception that a judge, who is supposed to be impartial, may feel beholden to a campaign donor. As PMC Executive Director Lynn Marks explained:

When you’re in court sitting with your attorney and looking across at your opponent or opponent’s attorney who made a contribution -it doesn’t matter how much they gave; it matters that they did.

It’s true the Caperton decision doesn’t specify the dollar amount at which an appearance of impropriety begins-it doesn’t need to. One dollar having passed from any party before the court to the judge behind the bench is one dollar too much. It’s time to get judges out of the fundraising business.

An article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review explores how the Caperton decision is motivating discussion and dialouge in Pennsylvania.  According to Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille , the decision “raises questions for an elected judiciary.”  He noted that Pennsylvania judgesand justices will need to explore whether recusal rules need to be rewritten.

But the issues go deeper than that.  People in Pennsylvania are seriously talking about bigger changes, incuding changing the way we select appellate court judges.  PMC Executive Director Lynn Marks explained, “‘[The Caperton decision] puts the issue of merit selection squarely on the radar screen of important issues for Pennsylvania to tackle.’”

State Representative Matt Smith, sponsor of the recently introduced Merit Selection legislation, concurred and noted that the United States’ Supreme Court’s Caperton decision is making some legislators turn to Merit Selection as the answer: “‘Even people who said as recently as a year ago they opposed this, now those folks see the need to eliminate money and politics from the process.’”  The best way to do that is Merit Selection.

In the wake of the judicial primary elections and on the same day the United States Supreme Court found that campaign contributions required a judge’s recusal, PMC and PMCAction are proud to announce that new legislation has been introduced into the Pennsylvania House and Senate to implement a Merit Selection system for the three statewide appellate courts.

We applaud  prime Senate sponsor Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie, and cosponsor, Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Delaware and Montgomery, and House sponsors Reps. Matthew Smith, D- Allegheny, and Will Gabig, R- Cumberland, for their leadership in working to create a better system for selecting appellate judges.

As Senator Earll explained, “The public has been losing confidence in the fairness of our courts and judges, in large part because big campaign contributors often appear in court before the judges they support.  We need a system that encourages public trust and confidence in the courts. That system is merit selection.”  Representative Smith concurred, noting that “I am pleased to advocate for this key reform to our judicial selection process so that we can ensure the system is fair and reasonable.”

We are pleased that Pennsylvanians will have the opportunity to discuss how we should be selecting our appellate court judges.  This is a critical issue, and it has been a hot topic recently because of the recent elections, the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court and the anticipated decision in Caperton v. Massey. Pennsylvanians should continue to raise questions and debate the issue.  We sincerely hope that this process will result in the question being put to Pennsylvania voters in a referendum to change the constitution.

A brief summaryof the legislation can be found on our legislation page.  The text of the proposed amendment and accompanying enabling legislation are available: SENATE BILL No. 860 and HOUSE BILL No. 1621 (proposed amendment); SENATE BILL No. 861 and HOUSE BILL No. 1619 (proposed enabling legislation).

We hope to engage in a productive dialogue.