Litigation

Justice O?Connor Active, a ?Debate-Changer?

By Peter Hardin

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, jetting around the nation to speak about the importance of merit selection of judges and of civics education, has become “the most active retired justice in decades.”

That’s the assessment of an intriguing profile in USA Today. Readers of Gavel Grab are familiar with Justice O’Connor’s travels to champion an end to judicial elections, but the USA Today piece also attributes to law professor James Sample of Hofstra University a strong review of Justice O’Connor’s effectiveness.

“Judicial elections are not going to go away, not in our lifetime,” said  Sample. “But she has been part of progress toward more incremental reform.”

“She has changed the nature of the debate,” Sample added, “so that people from all different ideological perspectives take judicial independence more seriously.” Justice O’Connor wrote a forward to a recent report written by Justice at Stake, Sample, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics; it examined soaring judicial election spending in the past decade (see Gavel Grab).

In her speeches, Justice O’Connor discusses the threat to judicial independence posed by increasing big spending in judicial campaigns. The spending delivers a message that justice is for sale, she tells her audiences.

This week, she visited Iowa (see Gavel Grab) and commended the state’s merit-based system for selecting judges. She said Iowa is experiencing a stressful period, according to a Quad City Times article, with three state Supreme Court justices the target of an ouster drive in retention elections. They face activists’ anger over a decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Justice O’Connor referred to courts as “the one safe place” for citizens to turn for fair and impartial treatment, and contended judges ought to be shielded from retaliation for their actions on the bench.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 09, 2010 (boomark / email).