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In the last weeks of the Pennsylvania judicial election season, campaign contributions in the Superior Court race are becoming the focus of more scrutiny.  A big donation from The Committee for a Better Tomorrow, the political action committee of the Philadelphia Trial LawyersAssociation to Democrat David Wecht is at issue.  The Allentown Morning Call reports that the political action committee contributed $300,000 to the Wecht campaign, and $25,000 to the campaign of Republican candidate Vic Stabile.  This raises Wecht’s fundraising to more than $500,000, which overtakes the spending of each of the nine Superior Court candidates who ran in 2009.  The Republican party has issued a press release, critcizing Wecht’s acceptance of the contribution and urging him to recuse from any case involving a lawyer who contributed to the political action committee in question.

PMC and PMCAction have long been concerned about the real and perceived influence of contributions to judicial campaigns; this concern applies to all donors and all candidates.  We know that judicial campaign contributions lead the public to believe that justice is for sale, and we therefore urge Pennsylvania to get judges out of the fundraising business once and for all. The way to do this is to stop electing appellate court judges. Merit Selection is the answer.

The Legal Intelligencer today examines (subscription required) the sources of the recently reported contributions to the election campaigns of Supreme Court candidates Jack Panella and Joan Orie Melvin.  Most interesting to us is the focus on one particular contributor and the motivation for its contributions.

The article notes that most of the money reported by both campaigns in this cycle came from a single source — Committee for a Better Tomorrow, the political action committee of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. This worries some observers:

“I just think too much money from a single organization is not a good thing,” said Rob Byer, a former Commonwealth Court judge and head of the appellate division of Duane Morris’ trial practice group. “The problem is, how do you get people interested in contributing the money needed for judicial elections unless they have an interest in the outcome of cases?”

Mark Tanner who leads the PAC explained the rationale for the existence of the PAC and its contributions:

Tanner said the committee was formed as a way for lawyers and law firms to support candidates without the ethical quandary that comes with writing a check directly to a candidate.

“A number of lawyers have contributed to that PAC with the goal of supporting the judges we believe in,” Tanner said. “Clearly Jack Panella received more in funding, but Joan Orie Melvin received funding, too. . . .”

“Certainly Judge Panella and Judge Melvin have staked out different ground regarding complaints brought by individuals,” Tanner said. “There were certainly opinions that showed Melvin was supportive of individual rights, but on balance we found that Judge Panella was more supportive of our view on how the justice system should operate.”

Tanner’s response only served to increase Byer’s concern:

“That’s totally antithetical to a fair system of justice,” Byer said. “Such statements don’t help the candidates they’re supporting.”

Organizational support for a candidate should be based on qualifications and experience, not whether the judge is more likely to rule in favor of a group’s interests, Byer said.

Why do individuals, organizations and PAC’s give to some candidates and not others? What motivates an individual or entity to contribute to a judicial candidate? And how do the answers to these questions affect the public perception of our courts — already severely diminished and inclined to believe that “justice is for sale?”

Campaign finance reports were due this week from Pennsylvania judicial candidates.  Judging from the Associated Press’ report, the money is rolling in. The AP reports that Democrat Jack Panella has raised $1.7 million this year, and Republican Joan Orie Melvin has raised $418,000 to date.  Unions and a political action committee of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers’ Association account for a good portion of the reported contributions.

We have about five weeks until election day.  Looks like the 2009 judicial elections will be pretty expensive.