Report: Campaign spending in state judicial elections more than doubles since last decade

[cory777]

Source: AP

Campaign fundraising for elections to the nation's top state courts has doubled to more than $200 million over the last decade, fueled partly by super-spending individuals and groups investing big money to influence down-ticket races, according to a study released Monday.

Between 2000 to 2009, campaign spending for state Supreme Court posts surged to $206.9 million compared with $83.3 million in the previous decade, the report showed. It also found 20 of the 22 states with Supreme Court contests had their costliest-ever campaigns.

"These corporations and trial lawyers have millions of millions of dollars at stake, and they feel if they can just spend a few million dollars to influence the outcome, it's worth it," said James Sample, a Hofstra Law School professor who was the study's lead author. "We're sort of playing with fire when you're putting this much money into our courts."

The study also analyzed 29 elections in the 10 states with the most costly judicial campaigns, finding that the top five spenders in each election poured an average of $473,000 into the contests. The remaining contributors averaged about $850 apiece.




Read more: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/ap/report-judicial-spending-doubles-in-last-decade-100741259.html

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Breaking, Uncensored, Alternative News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[napi21]

1. I find public awareness for judicial candidates to be extremely lacking.

I know before the internet, I knew slim to nothing about judicial candidates. I've lived in several different states & it's the same everywhere The internet has improvd that, but only if you are a responsibleenough voter to check out the candidates info on the net.

When I lived in Tx, our corp. atty was running for locak judgeship. I KNEW I didn't want to vote for him because he was a real nutball. He be;ieved any Dr. who performed an abortion should go to jail and so should the woman patient. Granted his opposition didn't ever say that, but since this was before the net, I didn't really know what he DID stand for.

I think the same problem still exists becsut there are very few people who will take the time to go research the candidates online.

I guess more funding helps but only if both sides have the opportunity to produce ads.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

2. Has anybody studied judicial votes in cases involving previous donors to judges?

[Sgent]

3. Yep

there was a study published in the Tulane Law Review about attorney's donating to a campaign, and their cases being more likely to have favorable outcomes. It involved (elected) Louisiana Supreme Ct Justices, and was published in the last two years.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Thanks for that hint--Up to an 80 percent chance of a favorable ruling

from a particular Justice after "contributing to" him is pretty spectacular.

From http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Louisiana_Supreme_Court :

'Court's impartiality questioned

Tulane University study.
In February of 2008, Tulane University Law Professor Vernon Palmer and John Levendis, an economics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, released a study ( http://www.law.tulane.edu/uploadedFiles/Tulane_Journal_Sites/Tulane_Law_Review/docs/824palmer27.pdf ) that concluded that Supreme Court Judges overwhelmingly rendered verdicts that favored people who had made contributions to the justices. ...
After researching 181 cases over 14 years, the chances of a justice ruling in a benefactor's favor increased significantly--"If a litigant or attorney had made at least one contribution to a justice the court ruled in their favor 65% of the time." Two of the seven justices had a "contributors in-favor percentage of at least 80%." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/us/29bar.html )'

Chief Justice disputes study.
The Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice called the study by Tulane University Law Professor Vernon Palmer and Loyola University Professor of Economics John Levendis a "baseless and unsupported" attack. Chief Justice Pascal Calogero wrote in a statement posted on the court's Web site, that the published Tulane Law Review article relied on "flawed data and methodology in concluding that some justices have been 'wittingly or unwittingly' influenced by donations from lawyers who appear before them."

Tulane apologizes, authors don't.
In September 2008, Tulane University Dean of Law, Lawrence Ponoroff, sent an apology letter to the Louisiana Supreme Court. <16> "Because of the miscalculation in the underlying data, the reliability of some or all of the authors' conclusions in the study as published has been called into question." In a September 15th, 2008 interview with The Times-Picayune, study author Professor Vernon Palmer took full responsibility for the errors found in the study, but stood by the conclusions of his study. "Yet with all the mistakes now corrected, he said, the study's conclusions, broadly speaking, are the same." ( http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/law_school_issues_apology_to_h.html )

[No Elephants]

4. The Framers knew judges should be appointed for life. Wake up, America.

Interesting thing about the {AP} article: no indication if more Republican judges are benefiting from donations.

Anyone want to bet?

[trof]

5. And Alabama leads the list in judicial campaign spending.

Karl Rove did his nasty work very well back in the early 90s.
Until the last election, the court was all white, all male, and all repug.
Now, at least the chief justice is a Dem woman.