The State

Politics and judges

August 2, 2004

FOR THE LATEST illustration of why public election of judges is a bad idea, we turn to Illinois, where the trial lawyers and the doctors and business groups have taken their battle over tort reform to this fall’s race for an open seat on the state supreme court.
Apparently, neither side is content to leave such a matter to the state legislature and governor, which are supposed to decide matters of policy; instead, they are trying to corrupt the people who swear an oath to keep their personal opinions to themselves and rule on the basis of the laws that others have written.
This attempt to stack the bench with people who are so closed-minded that they can’t decide cases fairly is bad enough on its own. But it creates additional problems, because judicial canons bar candidates from discussing their opinions on matters likely to come before them. So when the trial lawyers or the doctors misrepresent a judge’s position, the judge can’t defend himself; any defense has to come from the special interest group on the other side, creating a sense of indebtedness.
What’s so ironic here in South Carolina is that, by and large, the people clamoring for public election of judges are people who care about the needs of the poor — the very people who will be completely shut out when the deep-pocketed special interests start running the judicial selection process, and buying off the judges.