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Philadelphia’s Traffic Court, already suffering from bad press due to allegations that Judge Willie Singletary displayed a picture of his genitals to a court employee, experienced a new setback this week. Newly-elected Judge Christine Solomon failed the required examination for Traffic Court and Magisterial District Court judges and was not able to take the oath of office along with other new judges.

Currently, Traffic Court judge elections are based on politics, not competence. To qualify, candidates must be 21 years old and a Philadelphia resident for at least one year. They need no formal legal training but non-attorney judges must complete a one-month preparatory course covering traffic laws and court procedure and pass a two-hour essay and multiple choice test before taking the bench (Judicial Code (42 Pa C.S.A. §3112)). Solomon, a ward leader, benefited from winning the first ballot position and strong support from the party leadership during the primary. In Philadelphia, that was all she needed to win a six-year tenure as a Traffic Court judge along with its $89,000 salary. A retest will be offered on January 31st.

This incident demonstrates that judicial elections are not designed to put the most qualified judges on the bench. There must be a better way.

An editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer uses the case of a Philadelphia Traffic Court as evidence of the problems inherent in electing judges.  Traffic Court Judge Willie Singletary is in trouble, and as the editorial points out, it’s not the first time.

Judge Singletary, who was already sentenced to a reprimand and probation by the Court of Judicial Discipline for violations during his campaign that included direct solicitation of contributions and seeming to promise favorable outcomes in exchange for donations, has now been escorted out of of Traffic Court following allegations that he showed naked pictures of himself to a City employee doing work related to Traffic Court.   And, before he was elected to Traffic Court, Singletary had amassed huge traffic fines ($11,500) and had his driver’s license suspended.  This history prompted the following observation by the Inquirer:

Beyond suggesting an ability to empathize with the plight of drivers in similar straits, Singletary’s resumé hardly stands as an endorsement for Pennsylvania’s system of electing judges. It’s also a condemnation of the vetting process of the city’s dominant Democratic Party, to which many judicial candidates must pay fealty – and a hefty donation – for its help on Election Day.

We’ve long known that judicial elections reward fundraising prowess, campaign skill, and other attributes that are unrelated to one’s ability to serve as a judge.  Pennsylvanians deserve a system of choosing judges that is designed to get the most qualified, fair and impartial judges on the bench.  Judicial elections are not the way.

An Illinois judge is being scrutinized for her acceptance of campaign contributions from three law firms shortly after assigning them favorable trial dates in the asbestos case calendar.  As The Telegraph reports, Judge Barbara Crowder was removed from presiding over those cases after news of the donations became public, and now Madison County Board Chair Alan Dunstan has requested that the Judicial Inquiry Board investigate:

Importantly, the acceptance of certain campaign contributions creates a perception of conflict and negatively impacts the image of Madison County, the courts and of Judge Crowder. . . . As Madison County Board chairman, I appreciate the quick action of Chief Judge Ann Callis and the other judges in the Third Judicial Circuit to remove Judge Crowder from her former docket. However, despite that action, I believe the judicial review I have requested is warranted.

Judge Crowder maintains that there is no connection between her scheduling order and the contributions and has announced that she will return the campaign contributions.

This incident, however it is resolved, highlights a major problem with electing judges — elections require judicial campaigns to raise money from the people and organizations most likely to later appear before those judges in court.  This, in turn, fosters the public perception that “justice is for sale.”  The best way to solve the problem: get judges out of the fundraising business.

That’s the tile of an op-ed by two of our our partners — Justice at Stake’s Bert Brandenburg and the Brennan Center’s Adam Skaggs — in Reuters.  It explores  the growing problems caused by campaign contributions in judicial elections.  The authors recount the increasing costs of judicial elections, the source of the funding, and the rise of “super spenders.”  They then remind us that “Court cases are supposed to be decided by the law, not by who wrote the biggest campaign check to the judge.”  The public concern about this is also growing, as recent polling data reveals that “Voters clearly recognize the risks to fair and impartial courts when judges have to depend on deep-pocketed benefactors to gain a seat on the bench.

The role of money in judicial elections and the public perception that campaign contributions affect judicial decision-making are critical reasons to find a better way to choose judges.  Merit Selection takes judges out of the fundraising business; no longer would the public have to worry whether a lawyer or party in court had contributed to the campaign of one of the judges or justices deciding the case.

A recent article in the Texas Tribune discusses the potential in statewide judicial elections for candidates to be selected based on criteria no less superficial than the ethnic indicia a name provides.

The article, titled “The Cues Voters Use to Elect Unknown Candidates,” argues that “voters choose dozens of important state officials in every election without knowing a thing about them. So they rely on other cues — like political affiliations, pleasing names and who knows what else.” The article runs through some of the results of recent Texas appellate court elections, and tries to reconstruct the reasoning voters might have employed when making their selections.

Noting that the preeminent quality that voters in Texas are looking for is a “Republican ‘R’ behind [a candidate’s] name”, the article proposes that the real contest for officials occurs in the G.O.P. primary in March, giving even less time for voters to actually understand a candidate and make an informed choice, and leaving far less relevant qualities of candidates to serve as deciding factors.

The article poses the question, “When little else is known about two candidates in a G.O.P. primary, is a Hispanic surname a liability?” The judicial race in which Stephen Wayne Smith was victorious against Xavier Rodriguez for a spot on the Texas Supreme Court is used as an illustrative example. Little was known about either candidate going into the election. What, then, did the voters rely upon when making their choice? Names were all the public had available to them in the voting booth; it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether names decided the race.

When we elect judges in contested elections, we unconsciously – or consciously, as the case may be – impose our own biases and agendas onto the concept of justice, something that should be set wholly apart from politics, prejudices, and ideology. A judiciary must serve the people, but a judge’s fitness to serve should be determined by his or her ability to interpret the law and see that justice is fairly administered – not the ability to win votes, and certainly not by factors as inconsequential as a surname.

It’s election day, and there are many important judicial elections on the ballot. Although we don’t think elections are the best way to choose judges, as long as this is the system in place, we urge voters to educate themselves and go to the polls.  You can find information about the elections on PMC’s current elections page and frequently asked questions page.  You can learn about the pending proposals to change the way we select appellate court judges on the Merit Selection legislation page.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wants to know how you decide who to vote for in judicial elections.  So, they’ve created an on-line poll.  They offer four options:

I just look at their political party.

I look at bar association ratings.

I pick the familiar-sounding name.

No clue as to any of the candidates, so not voting.

Take a minute and vote. And if you have another reason that’s not listed there, let us know in the comments.

An editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decries the growing problem of money in judicial elections that was reported in The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2009-2010:

Lady Justice is often depicted blindfolded to signify that outside influence does not tip the scales she holds to weigh the truth. Unfortunately, the scales are being tipped by special interests that pour money into judicial elections to get a desired result.

Too often it is the voters themselves who are blind to what is going on, yet this is a national problem and Pennsylvania is affected worse than most.

The editorial discusses the money raised in the 2009 Pennsylvania Supreme Court race between Justice Joan Orie Melvin and Judge Jack Panella, and notes that plaintiffs’ trial lawyers and the state Republican party provided much of the money that funded those campaigns.

The editorial then urges that the solution to the money problem is Merit Selection: “In a merit selection system of the sort proposed but not adopted in Pennsylvania, the corrupting influence of money would not be an issue.”  That’s true, because Merit Selection gets judges out of the fundraising business and stops the flow of money to judicial candidates from people and organizations that later appear before the judges they helped elect.

Merit Selection legislation is pending in the House and Senate.  Passage would set the stage for Pennsylvanians to have the opportunity to decide whether we should find a better way to select appellate court judges.  Without reform, we are left with the alternative described in the closing words of the editorial: a Pennsylvania where “politicians and public alike wear self-imposed blindfolds and pretend only to hear banging gavels, not cash hitting the scales of justice.”

That’s the title of an editorial in the Connecticut Law Tribune.  The editorial discusses the problems inherent in judicial elections, including “the twin evils” of campaign cash and retribution for unpopular opinions. It then moves on to discuss the recent Wisconsin elections, highly politicized, expensive and divisive.  The editorial notes that the role of judges is different, and that the way we choose them should reflect that:

The ultimate power of the judiciary comes from the respect the public has when it feels that the judiciary’s decisions are those of an independent, unbiased institution and that such an institution is more suited than the public itself to decide questions of law and fact. A judicial election that becomes a proxy for resolution of a political dispute is no way to instill public confidence in the independence and objectivity of the judiciary.

This makes sense to us.

The editorial expresses pride and relief that Connecticut does not use judicial elections.  It seems a lesson worthy of study for Pennsylvania.

This is the question our friends at What About Clients ask today.  In a nutshell, JD Hull explains that judicial elections:

send bad-smelling messages to all clients, all Americans, and the entire world about the nature of justice in America: (1) Judges have “constituents”; and (2) Justice here is “for sale”.

Well, put.  Thanks for breaking this issue down to the key point:  judicial elections are bad for all of us.