judgesonmerit.org

WDUQ, Pittsburgh’s flagship NPR station, aired this piece earlier this week about the growing support for the Merit Selection of judges in Pennsylvania. The station cited PMC’s support of the current legislation before the state House of Representatives and quoted PMC Chairman Robert C. Heim decrying the problem with mixing money and judicial selection. Regarding the $3 million-plus raised by the 2 Supreme Court candidates in this past election (and the $4.5 million spent, including over $1 million spent by the Republican Party on television ads for victorious candidate Judge Joan Orie Melvin), Heim said:

“Most of it came from lawyers. Lawyers who are going to have their matters entertained and judged by the people to whom they were contributing money.”

The only truly effective way of taking money out of the equation is to stop treating judges like politicians, and implement a judicial selection process, like Merit Selection, in which there is no campaigning.

Dave Davies of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote yesterday in response to Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts’ press release on the huge amount of money spent by the candidates and third-parties on this year’s PA Supreme Court race. Data from the current year is still incomplete, yet PMC reports that at least $4.5 million has already been spent.

In recent years, Pennsylvania has been leading the nation in money spent on judicial elections. These extreme figures highlight the need to switch to a merit-based selection process. PMC’s Lynn Marks told Davies of the inherent dangers of judicial election fundraising:

These candidates have to raise enormous amounts of money, and it comes from groups that are often in state court – lawyers, businesses, unions and political committees, and also the state political parties. If you think of yourself in court, you don’t want to be sitting there wondering whether your opponent, or your opponent’s attorney, made a large contribution to the judge.”

A procedural switch from elections to merit selection requires a change in the state constitution. There is current legislation pending in both the House and Senate to achieve such an amendment.

Hopefully the data from the 2009 Supreme Court race will make both voters and their representatives take note and reconsider our current system of choosing judges. Justice is not a commodity. No one should ever worry that it might be for sale.

PMC, the League of Women Voters of PA and the Temple University Beasley School of Law Student Bar Association co-sponsored a debate between the candidates running for the vacancy on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  The candidates, Superior Court Judges Jack Panella and Joan Orie Melvin, answered questions about campaign contributions, recusal decisions, the Luzerne County Courthouse scandal and the role of the Supreme Court in deciding cases and administering the court system.  Although the candidates agreed on several issues, their exchanges — particularly about this campaign — did become heated.

Read PMC’s press release about the debate.  For those who missed attending live, the debate will be televised on the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) Sunday Oct. 25 at 4:00 pm; Monday Oct. 26 at 10:00 pm; Thursday Oct. 29 at 10:00 pm; Sunday Nov. 1 at 3:00 pm; and Monday Nov. 2 at 4:00 pm.