The business lobby is gearing up to overturn merit selection of judges wherever possible, online magazine Slate reports. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has thrown its weight behind these initiatives, writing earlier this year that “picking judges behind closed doors only takes things further from our democratic ideals.”
There is a sort of “machine politics” behind such efforts, which the Slate article describes: “There’s a pattern: First, a local Federalist Society chapter publishes a paper questioning merit selection…. Then a poll of state voters appears from the Polling Company, run by GOP pundit Kellyanne Conway. The questions are carefully crafted to elicit hostility to merit selection (in Tennessee, questioners helpfully pointed out that the commission could include ‘criminal defense lawyers’). CRC Communications, which ran the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans campaign, handles PR for the anti-merit effort.”
Some people want everything on their own terms, and the business lobby is at the ready to enable them. Gentle reader, would you want to be involved in a case before a supposedly impartial judge — for whom your case, or an issue related to it, had been a point of controversy in the judge’s election campaign?
Voters seem to be showing some resistance to these campaigns. According to the Slate article: “But the specter of judges chasing after money unnerves the public: three in four Americans believe campaign cash affects courtroom decisions…. The latest John Grisham thriller casts a toxic tycoon buying a court race just to win a case.”