Why brag about a partisan court?

We recently received a campaign email from Chief Justice Chuck Malone.

Malone, who was appointed chief justice last August by Gov. Robert Bentley, was offering an upbeat message to his friends and supporters.

“For the first time, we have a completely Republican Supreme Court and I am honored to be able to serve the people of Alabama as Chief Justice of that court and to ensure that the rule of law is upheld in our state,” he states in the first line.

In Alabama, all nine Supreme Court justices are Republican. That likely won’t change after this year’s elections. The Supreme Court of Alabama is as red as Tuscaloosa on a football Saturday. What does that say about the scales of justice?

Such a partisan court is troublesome, and not because all nine justices are Republican. We’d say the same thing if they were all Democrats.

In actuality, our Supreme Court is more skewed than the oft-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The words “court” and “skewed” should never be used together.

There’s much about Alabama politics that is broken. How we choose Supreme Court justices is one example.According to the American Bar Association, Alabama is one of only seven states to have partisan elections. Fourteen states, including Georgia, have non-partisan elections - though in Ohio and Michigan political parties are involved with the nomination of candidates. Seventeen states have uncontested retention elections after initial appointment. Twelve states grant life tenure or use reappointment of some type for their highest courts.

In Alabama, it takes money – a lot of money- to become a Supreme Court justice in Alabama. According to www.al.com, Malone reportedly raised $163,000 for his campaign last month. If he does that from now until November, he could raise close to $2 million.

The website also stated that the candidates in the three Supreme Court races in 2010 spent nearly $3.2 million combined, according to the study, The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2009-2010. That put Alabama No. 2 in candidate fundraising – even though Democrats only put up a token effort.

“Since 1993, special interest groups vying for control of the court have contributed more than $54 million - nearly twice the amount in any other state - to candidates for the Alabama Supreme Court,” www.al.com reports. “In that period, the once Democrat-controlled nine-member court has become all-Republican.”

No wonder so many Alabamians believe we have the best judges money can buy. Consider this national data from the Justice at Stake Campaign, National Surveys of American Voters and State Judges (2001-02):

» Seventy-six percent of voters, and 26 percent of state judges, believe that campaign contributions made to judges have at least some influence on their decisions.

» Sixty-two percent of voters—including nearly 90 percent of African-American voters—feel that “there are two systems of justice in the U.S.—one for the rich and powerful and one for everyone else.”

» Nine-in-10 voters, and 8-in-10 state judges, say they are quite concerned about special interest groups buying advertising to influence the outcomes of judicial elections.

Many Republicans and Democrats in our state would join us in sharing those concerns. They certainly wouldn’t like to see our chief justice brag about the partisanship of our state’s highest court.