Legal News

Political Storm Clouds Still Hover Over Iowa Supreme Court

By Nathan Koppel

Has a state court ever been subject to more political heat than the Iowa Supreme Court?

Last year, Iowa voters ousted three of the seven justices on the court, following months of grassroots campaigning to unseat the judges for joining the court’s 2009 opinion striking down a ban on same-sex marriage.

Republican legislators in Iowa later started plotting a move to impeach the remaining four incumbent justices on the court, as we noted here.

According to the Iowa Constitution, a justice can be impeached "for any misdemeanor or malfeasance in office."

But Iowan Bob Vander Plaats, head of the conservative Family Leader who played a role in ousting the 3 justices, has offered the remaining justices a fig leaf, of sorts. They should be given the opportunity to resign, he said, before facing impeachment, the Quad-City Times reports.

“We should give the remaining four justices the opportunity to do the right thing," Vander Plaats told a crowd of about 30 people at Wise Guy's Pizza in Davenport.

Newt Gingrich has also gotten into the act, lining up $150,000 for the defeat of the justices, according to the Quad-City Times, citing an AP report.

Yesterday, a group opposed to removing the justices accused Vander Plaats of trying to politicize the courts, the Times reports.  Iowa lawyer Josh Mandelbaum called for greater disclosure of the names of donors to last year’s effort to remove the three justices.

"We should know if Iowans are funding his effort, or if that's coming from special interest groups, people outside the state who might have their own political agenda and not the best interests of Iowans in mind," Mandelbaum said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).