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DEL.ICIO.USPlea to censor legal races just a worn-out gag
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The legal establishment speech police are pitching hissy fits over the prospect that political speech might intrude into, well, politics — an eventuality that they’d find mighty displeasing.
Dire consequences, warns the president of the State Bar of Georgia. Mighty dire. Dire for American democracy. Or so writes Athens lawyer Jay Cook, chief defender of a world that existed before the U.S. Supreme Court opined less ominously that states with constitutions requiring judicial elections, like Georgia’s, should allow candidates to declare their views on disputed legal and political issues.
Not to take or declare “advance stances on how they would rule in particular legal matters” — something nobody is advocating — as posited by Tifton lawyer Rob Reinhardt. He is co-chairman of the self-selected Georgia Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns. His group is pushing judicial candidates to pledge that they will not “make false or misleading statements.”
A pledge that invites a rump group of unelected committee-ites, whose politics, agendas and biases are completely unexamined, to divine and then declare a candidate’s statements “misleading” is a pledge I wouldn’t sign for my grandmother.
“Misleading” is not an objective standard. It is presumptuous for a private group to arrogate unto itself the authority to police speech by candidates engaged in a public, constitutional function.
The long, hot summer opens with the stark reality that judicial races will appear on the ballot in November. Not many. At the Superior Court level, only seven of 57 incumbents statewide have competition. Another seven vacancies are contested.
Vacancies are rare — or were before the parties switched positions under the Gold Dome. The system, traditionally, had been to ignore the Constitution and, by informal agreement among judges, the legal establishment and governors, to substitute the resign-and-appoint method. Just before a term ends, the judge resigns and the governor appoints. Very buddy-buddy.
That’s a system that got us some splendid judges — and some bums. It worked conveniently for the buddies until two unfortunate interventions transpired. One was the election of a Republican governor who’s not some of the incumbents’ buddy. The other was that the U.S. Supreme Court unmuzzled judicial candidates.
In addition to local races, one of eight judges up for election or re-election at the appellate level drew opposition. Supreme Court Justice Carol W. Hunstein is being challenged by J. Michael Wiggins, a former U.S. Justice Department official and a top-ranking lawyer in Homeland Security. This will be a big-league race.
Despite the constitutional requirement to elect judges, Georgia is in its infancy with contested judicial elections. Heretofore, rules and customs have been so heavily stacked against challengers that only the occasional idealist, adventurer or oddball rose to opposition. The way we dishonored the Constitution to serve the ends of the powerful is one of the blights on this state’s system of justice.
Serious heavyweight contenders, like Wiggins, and like former Cobb Superior Court Judge Grant Brantley, who challenged Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears two years ago, are starting to emerge at the appellate level, which is where it matters most.
When John Roberts was being confirmed as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court last year, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) produced a letter from a dozen legal scholars who had examined the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on judicial speech that has the Georgia bar president so unhinged.
Their opinion, drafted primarily by Stephen Gillers of the New York University School of Law, was that so long as candidates don’t make “pledges, promises or commitments that are inconsistent with the impartial performance of the adjudicative duties of the office” on “cases, controversies, or issues that are likely to come before the court,” they are free to express their views.
In fact, they continue, it’s hardly possible for a nominee to reach top levels without having formed opinions on “significant constitutional issues and cases of the day.” Having those opinions and expressing them “will not undermine impartiality or the appearance of impartiality such that he or she would be disqualified when those issues come before the court,” they argued.
Voters do have a right to be informed. And turf-protecting lawyers have an obligation to let the clock turn. The buddy-buddy world they defend is gone. The U.S. Supreme Court ushered it out.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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Comments
By Rednecks - America's Al Qaeda
July 8, 2006 09:01 AM | Link to this
Greetings from Constanta, Romania on the Black Sea to the few decent folk on Wooten’s blog. To the rest of you yahoos, I hope you’ve recovered from your drunken hotdog binging from the 4 day weekend past. It is a beautiful afternoon here at the beach, even the Bush dollar goes a long way here. Romania is a great place, I don’t mind telling trash like Wooten’s folk about it - they don’t take foodstamps here and it is a looooong way from your mobile home parks… I don’t have to worry about a redneck invasion here like at Panama City or Myrtle Beach.
Wooten, of course, supports the best judiciary $$ can buy, and allowing Georgia rednecks - 40% who can’t even finish high school in 4 years - to pick the judges. How pathetic.
People like Gerogia rednecks - little evolved from the chimpanzee - should leave picking judges to their betters.
By time for the truth
July 8, 2006 09:53 AM | Link to this
WOW!!! That was a really bad batch of crystal meth mate!! You’re now so badly bewildered that you’re confusing your trailer park in Murray County with Romania. Obviously you’ve watched one too many Eurotrash Steven Segal movies - now witlessly based in and around in ultra cheap Bucharest.
I assume your real concern about GA judges is how long they give you after yet another cynical plea deal fails to address your chronic drug abuse and mental health issues.
Talking of chimps - as naturally you so often do - it must be very comforting knowing that your extended flea bitten familial primate group is large enough to faciliate on demand organ replacement for you any time the budget for zoological vetinary experimentation at Morris Brown allows.
I guess your maternal grandfather never got over that off camera incident in Bedtime For Bonzo when Sir Ronald Reagan (PBUH) accidentally dropped him in that Hollywood septic tank for unAmerican activities.
I understand your social anthropologist has again instructed you to leave politics to those on the right who actually understand the issues. I suggest you celebrate this with a bunch of very green bananas - as usual dont bother peeling them!!
By Patriotic Foreskin
July 8, 2006 10:01 AM | Link to this
Bush promised not to apply a litmus test for judicial nominees which could determine their Political Haughtiness.
This PH factor could indicate which redstate nominee might turn blue under the acidic conditions of a hearing. The red or blue color of a political litmus depends on the clandestine and symbiotic relationship of supposedly competing parasitic fungus that leech from slime.
Single cell - or single brain cell?
By jbmlaw
July 8, 2006 10:32 AM | Link to this
Elected or not, I think term limits would be beneficial for judges. 10 years max. After that, some of them get arrogant.
By time for the truth
July 8, 2006 10:45 AM | Link to this
The truly unfortunate thing about judges in this country is the innate political dimension of their appointments and elections. This invariably means that the more smug ‘conservative’ (with a small ‘c’) religious types tend to be GOP and the more shrill lefty hateful anti-conservative legislators from the bench tend to be Democrats.
Satisfying the increasingly polarised respective electorates and/or appointing political masters sadly perpetuates this self serving vicious jurist cycle. Somewhat regrettably there is no Lord Chancellor’s office that makes a relatively dispassionate decision on appointments after extensive soundings and examination of an appointees record etc. Whilst this approach can obviously facilitate an element of political chicanery or political nepotism it’s far less problematical than the ultra confrontational/partisan approach of allowing the likes of Schumer, Kennedy, Durbin, Leahy et al any kind of say in judicial appointments. Clearly I understand that’s the system here - but overall it works very badly and allows feminazis like Ginsberg to be appointed (virtually unopposed) for life because the GOP are usually much more accomodating than their shrill opponents. The GOP needs to simply mirror back exactly what is meted out. Although the decidedly lefty/moderate tone of the senate sadly mitigates against that.
Given the poor levels of political engagement here in the US - usually not more than half the electorate even bothers to vote, and for judges its invariably way below that - its the so called moderate types that have disproportionate influence as the left/right may effectively cancel one another out. Of course pandering to one’s base can help overcome the appallingly low levels of voter engagement in judicial picks.
I suppose most folks could care less otherwise they would vote. Its compulsory to vote to Australia, but I strongly suspect that wouldn’t help improve things here. Just imagine all those soap opera, American Idol, hip hop lovin’ and country and western lovin’ airheads being forced to have an opinion. Christ, we could end up with something even worse than a Clinton running things!!
By Patriotic Foreskin
July 8, 2006 12:15 PM | Link to this
Whilst? Whistle while you work? (Eisenhower has the power to whistle while you work).
Arrogate? I had to look that one up too. If I read my Funk and Wagnal correctly, then Mr. Wooten pulled off the quadruple redundancy. Here’s how he did it, and I gotta say, “I’M NOT WORTHY!”
Here’s the def of Arrogate: to claim an unjustified authority over any subject or idea or civil matter or whatever, (pedantics sometimes arrogate).
Thus Mr. Wooten used the word in a defining sentence, “It is presumptuous for a political group to arrogate unto itself the authority..”
The presumption is implied by the word arrogate, so is, “unto itself”, so is “the authority”.
Four redundant terms in one sentence sets a new world record. Great stuff, Mr. Wooten. Syntactical hijinks at it’s best. The must read blog of the week - I laughed, I cried, I coveted as I beheld the crystaline fragility of your creation and marveled at it’s sheer beauty: Remove one word and there would have been diminishment - remove one phrase and the whole structure would have collapsed.
The quadruple redundancy. Now it belongs to the ages.
By getalife
July 8, 2006 12:54 PM | Link to this
Jim,
I would like to draw attention to an important isssue tied into immigration
This is why Bush does not want to secure the borders and make it easier for immigrants to obtain an ID card to work here. Their agenda is a civil union for the Anericas and one government.
By Jim Wooten
July 8, 2006 12:58 PM | Link to this
So, Patriotic Fore, the message does come across then that arrogance plays a role in their action? Good. But shouldn’tthe foul just be triple redundancy — as in all after “presumptuous”?
By Patriotic Foreskin
July 8, 2006 01:01 PM | Link to this
I dont know, I’m just a little blogger who misses his mommy.
By Patriotic Foreskin
July 8, 2006 01:15 PM | Link to this
I arrogated to correct your syntax? This word is extremely difficult to use. I’m starting to hate the word “arrogate”. Political Foreskin dont like words he cant abuse humorously. It’s not nice to challenge Political Foreskin that way. I’m going to burn my Thesaurus just to get even with you, Mr. Wooten. Then I’m going to learn ebonics and start a new genre of journalism called BLAP (the blog-rap).
By Ugotta B. Kidding
July 8, 2006 01:18 PM | Link to this
time for the truth: I’m just sittin’ in your Amen corner today Brother. Tell it like it is!!!
By
July 8, 2006 01:36 PM | Link to this
Jim: Redneck’s been spotted with a pup tent setup next to the ‘63 Rambler on the beautiful white sandy beaches of “Berrien Beach” along the Alapaha River on the Berrien-Lanier county lines. Sounds like he’s sipped a few too many PBRs and smoked a little too much “wacky ‘backy”. Thinks he’s in Romania. Happy trails there, Redneck. Happy trails!
By Patriotic Foreskin
July 8, 2006 02:13 PM | Link to this
I’m Unbrissed minuteman I’m dope for the rhyme I speak 4 jazizzle I’m down with lines
Some chump put da homie on a jacked vernac I gitz wid da mommie and I umlaut dat!
I’m punk-uatin’ propers I’m colon-izing words I be conjugatin’ verbatory everywhere I’m heard.
By Ugotta B. Kidding
July 8, 2006 03:28 PM | Link to this
uh-huh…uh-huh… You’s a double bad boy!!
By Larry
July 10, 2006 08:22 AM | Link to this
Redneck: care for some peanuts or a banana? Patricotic ‘skin: Kudos to your extensive albeit somewhat excessive literary skills! (Think I’ve used that before, sorry!) Time for the truth: how do you know we don’t already have something worse than Clinton Tse Tung running things?
By time for the truth
July 10, 2006 09:20 AM | Link to this
Cheers for the kind words Kidding …
Larry … because we don’t have A. Hitler-Gore as V.P. or worse; the loathsome Kennedys, Schumers, Leahys, Durbins, Boxers, Harkins etc are still confined to their usual hateful bitter impotent hypocritical rhetoric and occasional spoiling role; the wanker Daschle is busy organising more Indian voter fraud out on the reservation for his Brokeback Mountain comeback; Shrillary is now even hated by a good number of dems - plus everyone else. The useless Bill Frist is happily retiring. McCain is even supporting the war now, though for reasons of political 2008 expedience. And sick Willie’s perjuring and groping legacy of riding/lying into power (twice) on the back of the poisonous big eared billionaire Texan dwarf will never be repeated. Remember Sick Willie lost control of Congress by being sick Willie. And the ultra leftist band aid abusing, movie camera totin’ war zone warrior Kerry never looked like regaining the White House. Even though as a typical liberal he targeted the wealthy - both his wives were extremely wealth - the foreign one being a narcissistic nutjob.
Buh aint perfect, his endless religious obsession is pretty nauseating but clearly aimed at the evangelical nutters and his shameless lets appease liberals and illegals approach to the border is fast becoming his (politicial) achilles heel. But he’s not a Kerry or an AlBOre for which the nation should be eternally grateful.
By Larry
July 10, 2006 10:30 AM | Link to this
By the time: it was just a question to see what I could stir up. Mr. Bush won me over the next time he spoke to the nation after the terrorist attacks on us. If only he weren’t a staunch Republican…