Suchergebnisse

All judicial officers in the state of Minnesota, including the chief justice and six associate justices of the supreme court and fifty judges in the district courts, are required to be nominated and elected without partisan designation. Judicial nominations and elections were made nonpartisan by the election law of 1912. During a quarter of a century, the nonpartisan ballot has given Minnesota the services of an exceptionally well qualified bench, and sentiment is practically unanimous in favor of continuing this method of selecting judges.Once elevated to the bench, a Minnesota judge has a good chance of continuing in that capacity as long as he wishes to serve. Supreme court justices have been regularly reelected; so that their tenure has been, for all practical purposes, the same as that of federal judges. Three of the present members of the supreme court have been elected once, two have been elected twice, one three times, and one four times. With one exception, the supreme court justices since 1912 have retired from office by resignation or death.Of the eighty-four district court judges who have served since 1912, only four have been defeated at the polls when seeking reelection. At the present time, thirty-six of the state's fifty district court judges have been elected two or more times, and twenty-three have been elected three or more times.

Judges, even when popularly elected, are not representatives; they are not agents for their voters, nor should they take voter preferences into account in adjudicating cases. However, popularly elected judges are representatives for some election law purposes. Unlike other elected officials, judges are not politicians. But judges are policy-makers. Judicial elections are subject to the same constitutional doctrines that govern voting on legislators, executives, and ballot propositions. Except when they are not. The same First Amendment doctrine that protects campaign speech in legislative, executive, and ballot proposition elections applies to campaign speech in judicial elections – but not in quite the same way. Independent committees have the same right to spend in judicial elections as they do in other elections. But significant independent spending can result in the imposition of a constitutional restriction on the behavior of an elected judge who benefited from that spending. This restriction is without parallel for elected legislators or executives who benefit from similar independent spending.

The vast majority of states use elections to select at least some of their judges. The chief institutional variation in these contests is whether the candidates' partisanship appears on the ballot. This article expands on the extant literature with new data to examine how providing a party label influences voters' decisions. Using a survey experiment involving a low-visibility state appellate court, we find that affixing party labels to judicial candidates often helps our subjects select the candidate who is most aligned with their own party attachment and with their policy interests—an outcome that is especially notable for self-identified independents. We also show that the presence of party labels reduces the effect of another cue, gender. The results add context to the debate over the merits and drawbacks of partisan versus nonpartisan elections.

RESEARCH ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE QUANTITY OF INFORMATION THAT VOTERS POSSESS AND THEIR VOTING BEHAVIOR IN PARTISAN ELECTIONS HAS PRODUCED MIXED AND CONFUSING EMPIRICAL RESULTS. IN AN EFFORT TO PROVIDE A BROADER PERSPECTIVE, THIS PAPER EXPLORES THAT RELATIONSHIP IN NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS CONTESTED BY CANDIDATES OF OPPOSING PARTIES. THE PAPER ANALYZES SURVEY DATA ON TWO 1984 CONTESTS FOR SEATS ON THE OHIO SUPREME COURT, USING THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE FOR COMPARISON. DESPITE A HIGHLY PARTISAN CAMPAIGN, PARTY DEFECTIONS BY VOTERS WERE FAR MORE COMMON IN THE SUPREME COURT RACES THAN IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE, REFLECTING THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTY DESIGNATIONS ON THE BALLOT AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON CANDIDATES' PARTY AFFILLIATIONS. AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL, LEVELS OF INFORMATION HAD DIFFERING EFFECTS IN THE TWO SUPREME COURT RACES AND FOR DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN VOTERS; THIS FINDING SUGGESTS THAT THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION LEVELS ON VOTERS' CHOICES IS CONDITIONED BY THE CONTENT OF INFORMATION IN PARTICULAR CAMPAIGNS.

In the American system of justice, judges are expected to perform their role apart from the "political thicket," free of political pressure and indifferent to public opinion.

At the level of constitutional law, Williams-Yulee is a First Amendment case about judicial campaign fundraising. The First Amendment issues raised by judicial campaigns and money in politics are vital, and they are not the only issues implicated by Williams-Yulee. Williams-Yulee also implicates broader questions about how judicial election campaigns should be funded and ultimately whether to have judicial elections at all. I bring to Williams-Yulee a longstanding interest in a wide range of legal and policy issues surrounding judicial selection, including issues surrounding the extent and implications of correlations between judicial campaign contributions and judges' rulings. Williams-Yulee seems an opportune time to reconsider my and others' longstanding concerns about judicial elections.

In recent years, two inextricably connected issues have received a great deal of attention in both United States political discourse and in the legal academic literature. One issue of intense legal debate and frustration has been that of judicial recusal, including an examination of the appropriate standards that should necessarily apply to judges that seem conflicted or biased in their role as neutral arbiter. A second issue that has spawned heated commentary and great dispute over the past decade is that of campaign finance law, including examination of the role that powerful and wealthy benefactors play in American electioneering. Both issues came to a head in the past year as the United States Supreme Court decided two landmark cases that will have far-reaching implications and consequences, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The moment that these decisions were announced, their connection undoubtedly crystallized for many observers. As Caperton and Citizens United shed new light on judicial recusal and campaign finance in an interconnected manner, Professor Michael LeRoy delivers an important empirical study, "Partisan Election of Judges: Equal Justice?" that provides evidence that we as a nation have reason to fear this potentially pernicious interconnectedness. In a confluence of circumstance, what has been historically controversial, now puts in present peril the concept of "justice" and whether it can be "equal" in United States courts. Citizens United, Caperton v. Massey and "Partisan Election of Judges: Equal Justice?" together pose a troubling question: will judges who are elected in a partisan manner, where corporations can now more directly influence the result of judicial elections by contributing large cash electioneering outflows, manufacture outcomes that are biased toward those contributing corporations? The early returns are not good. That is to say, contemporary empirical evidence suggests that the answer to the inquiry posed above is "yes." Apparently partisan elected judges are unable to sit neutrally when large corporate expenditure ushered them to the bench. Or stated differently, when corporations are able to manipulate the judicial election process through significant cash disbursement, a judge that is unfriendly, if not hostile, to employee rights will be the likely result. The Supreme Court's decisions in Citizens United and Caperton stand poised to exacerbate this disheartening empirical implication. This Essay seeks to make sense of this confluence of Supreme Court decision making and recent empirical evidence. In examining this intermingling and its potential repercussions, Part II briefly considers several of the more disquieting of Professor LeRoy's findings in Partisan Election of Judges: Equal Justice? Part III reviews the holding of the controversial Citizens United in light of LeRoy's empirical report. Part IV examines the Caperton v. Massey decision, and queries whether it will have any protective influence in connection with corporate influence over the partisan judicial election process. Part V interrogates the consequences of LeRoy's study, Citizens United and Caperton, viewing each through a corporate law prism and seeks to offer forward looking conclusions and recommendations.

In the United States today the vast majority of states conduct elections in some form or fashion to select members of the judiciary. These elections bring into conflict two ideals of American government: officials who are accountable to the people, and the idea of a fair and impartial judiciary. Organizations such as the American Bar Association and the American Judicature Society have expressed misgivings about judicial elections for years; however, judicial elections continue to have support from voters. Judicial elections raise a myriad of ethical and political questions that have been the source of heated debate for years; however, several recent state and federal court decisions may have brought the debate to a head. Addressing issues such as the Voting Rights Act, and the First Amendment issues of campaign spending limits and restrictions on campaign speech, the courts have taken the position that competitive judicial elections are subject to the same laws as all other elections. This line of cases recently culminated in the Supreme Court's decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White.

In the United States today the vast majority of states conduct elections in some form or fashion to select members of the judiciary. These elections bring into conflict two ideals of American government: officials who are accountable to the people, and the idea of a fair and impartial judiciary. Organizations such as the American Bar Association and the American Judicature Society have expressed misgivings about judicial elections for years; however, judicial elections continue to have support from voters. Judicial elections raise a myriad of ethical and political questions that have been the source of heated debate for years; however, several recent state and federal court decisions may have brought the debate to a head. Addressing issues such as the Voting Rights Act, and the First Amendment issues of campaign spending limits and restrictions on campaign speech, the courts have taken the position that competitive judicial elections are subject to the same laws as all other elections. This line of cases recently culminated in the Supreme Court's decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White.