News
3/4/2009 - U.S. Supreme Court's decision involving a West Virginia judicial election should interest Alabama
THE ISSUE: A controversy over a West Virginia judicial election went Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court and should be watched closely in Alabama.
Maybe the most surprising thing about a U.S. Supreme Court case over a smelly judicial election is that it wasn't birthed in Alabama.
Instead, the case argued Tuesday at the country's highest court came from West Virginia. It involves a coal executive who spent at least $3 million to help elect a state Supreme Court candidate who later voted to overturn a huge judgment against his benefactor's company.
The question is whether the judge, Brent Benjamin, should have stepped aside from hearing the case. Some hope the Supreme Court's answer will make it clear, for the first time, when judges everywhere must sit out cases involving their campaign donors.
Nobody can say how the court will rule or how far its ruling will go. Regardless, the outcome should be of great interest in Alabama, a state that has made a bad name for itself in judicial elections.
Thirty-nine states elect some of their judges, but only a half-dozen do so through partisan elections. Alabama is one of the latter, and our court races have consistently led the country in both savagery and expense. In recent years, Alabama court races have been the most costly in the nation.
The problem in Alabama, as in West Virginia, is the perception about why people bankroll these campaigns - that is, the political donors are buying something, and the judges must be delivering.
In West Virginia, the judge argued there was no connection between the millions he received from Don Blankenship and the decision he made in favor of Blankenship's Massey Energy Co. In fact, the judge said he had ruled against Massey in other cases.
But in the case in question, the judge was part of a narrow majority (a 3-2 vote) that tossed out a $50 million judgment against Massey. Having been lavished with so much campaign money from the company's chairman, Benjamin could hardly participate in the case without raising questions of bias.
It just doesn't look good. And appearances do matter, at least if citizens are to have confidence in their courts.
Ask the people in Alabama, who have seen business groups and plaintiff lawyers wage all-out war for ownership of courts that are supposed to belong to all of us. As a result, too many Alabamians have come to view justice as something that is less "for all" and more "for those who fork out the most."
Alabama shouldn't wait for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to do something about that perception. Bills pending in the state Legislature would stop state judges from running under party banners, which would be an improvement if not a cure. Those putting up the cash for judges, in truth, aren't nearly as hung up on party labels as they are on their own bottom lines.
Rather than electing judges in any process that leaves them beholden to the special interests, Alabama should appoint judges based on qualifications and experience. Judges appointed to the bench could still be accountable to voters through retention elections. But they would stand alone for re-election instead of clawing their way through vicious political contests that require huge sums of money and foster the perception that justice is for sale.
Unfortunately, the outlook for that kind of change is so dim that even supporters aren't really pushing for it.
Instead, all eyes are on the U.S. Supreme Court - and what it will say about big-money court races that have come to be seen as little more than a sale on robes every few years.
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Source: AL.com