judgesonmerit.org

Speaking at the Economic Club of Phoenix, retired United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made clear that electing judges does not work and that Merit Selection is the way to go.  As Knowledge@W.P.Carey reports, Justice O’Connor offered this assessment of the recusal question presented in Caperton v. Massey (the United States Supreme Court case asking whether judges must recuse when significant campaign contributors appear before them):

What surprises O’Connor about the case, she said, is that the state allowed such bias into the courtroom in the first place. The argument shouldn’t be about whether a judge should be forced to recuse himself from cases with litigants who financed his election campaign. Instead, O’Connor said, it should center on whether judges should be elected at all.

“[I]t strikes me as a sad state of affairs when a case like this becomes a question of constitutionality when it’s clearly bad policy for the state to allow that environment to exist in the first place,” she said.

Justice O’Connor believes that electing judges undermines the independence of the judiciary, especially because of the role of money in the campaigns and the identity of the donors:

“The basic precept of equal justice under the law requires that neither side of the dispute has an unfair advantage,” Justice O’Connor said. “I think you might be concerned if you were in court litigating some issue in front of a judge who had been given a bunch of money by your opponent.”

Justice O’Connor also expressed her view on the singe most important step to be taken to increase judicial independence:

“If I could do one thing to protect judicial independence in this country,” O’Connor said, “it would be to convince those states that still elect their judges to adopt a merit selection system and — short of that — at least do something to remove the vast sums of money being collected by judicial candidates, usually from litigants who appear before them in the courtroom.”

We hope Pennsylvania will soon heed Justice O’Connor’s words.

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