Free speech and judicial elections don’t mix

Frustrating as it is for Sedgwick County voters to judge which judicial candidates are best, the answer is not for candidates and sitting judges to declare positions on hot-button social and political issues during the campaign. So it’s disturbing that Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost recently asked to join the other plaintiffs, including incoming Judge Robb Rumsey, in the federal lawsuit challenging the state’s judicial ethics canon, which limits what candidates for judge can say during campaigns.
Part of a national effort in reaction to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Minnesota case, the push to let judges and judicial candidates speak freely sounds great on its face. “There are two sets of rights involved here — the right of the judge to speak and the right of the people to know,” Richard Peckham, the Andover attorney who chairs the statewide Kansas Judicial Watch group, told the Kansas City Star.
But the questions on the group’s candidate questionnaire reveal a narrower goal: to pin down candidates on the school-finance lawsuit, same-sex marriage, assisted suicide and abortion. Such opinions are irrelevant to a judge’s decision making, which should be based on the law. The expression of such opinions also jeopardizes impartiality and the ability to do the job once on the bench, forcing the judge to recuse himself from cases related to his stated opinions. How does that serve justice?
Posted by Rhonda Holman

4 Comments

  1. Dusty Chaps
    Posted September 24, 2006 at 8:40 am | Permalink

    Bad. The questionnaire is about as impartial as a Ann Coulter column. It is intended to compartmentalize judges into convenient nooks. It is obviously written by a religious right mentality, and should be ignored by any sane candidiate.

    Hell, let em debate, throw verbal garbage at each other, or get into fist fights if they want. May the best man/woman win.

  2. Paul F. Rosell
    Posted September 24, 2006 at 11:22 am | Permalink

    The purpose of the law which this lawsuit challenges is not to maintain impartiality, the purpose of the law in question is to maintain voter ignorance.The Kansas Supreme Court is highly political.The Committees formed for judicial nomination are highly political.The Eagle doesn’t mind the current bias of the system because that bias usually leans to the left.

  3. Rage
    Posted September 24, 2006 at 6:58 pm | Permalink

    I am bothered that a lawyer like Tim Henderson can win a judgeship with a Rhorshach-like slogan as “Justice for all,” and not have to say anything at all about his approach to the law.

    But what these people are suggesting makes me think the cure is far worse than the disease. I know that partisan elections for judges is an extremely bad idea. Beyond that, I’m not sure what the best solution would be.

    To people like Rosell, any judges who don’t rule the way he likes are “highly political.” In practice, most judges–liberal, conservative and most points of polispace–rule on what they see is right. Some (like Scalia) ARE crassly political, but that doesn’t stop them from occasionally surprising their erstwhile supporters–so long as they have judicial independence. Hell, even Scalia supported the First Amendment in the flag desecration case, and was the crucial fifth vote (and opinion author) in the Kyllo (infrared search) case.

    What these people want to do is politically crucify judges who don’t faithfully obey their narrow, hateful ideology, OR ELSE (See Rose Bird, FORMER chief justice of the California Supreme Court).

    The notion that judges might decide cases based on their interpretion of the Constitutions and the law is anathema to these folks.

  4. JWink
    Posted September 24, 2006 at 8:00 pm | Permalink

    I suggest consideration be given to electing judges in non-partisan elections in February/April rather than political elections in August/November.

    Here in Sedgwick County, school board members and city council people are elected in the non-partisan April elections.

    In some places, in other states, city council people are elected in political (November) elections. Depends on the applicable laws of course.

    Non-partisan merely means that political party labels are not shown on the ballots. Candidates might be well-known political party members but this aspect is not played up. Sometimes in non-partisan elections, support groups not affiliated with specific parties, do rise up to support their candidates, pass out sample ballots and advertise for their candidates. Nothing wrong with that!