Gavel Grab

Before Gov. Robert Bentley appointed him as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in August, Charles “Chuck” Malone was the governor’s chief of staff.

From his new vantage point, Justice Malone says, he has gained a better understanding of how the legislature has addressed the fiscally strapped state courts.

“I didn’t know the judges and our judicial system were being pulled down to this extent,” Justice Malone said on Saturday, according to a Tuscaloosa News article. He told the Alabama Press Association the court system needs an additional $17 million in appropriations.

Adequate funding for the state’s court is his No. 1 goal, Justice Malone said, reminding his audience that “judges are the gatekeepers of the constitution” and that stable courts are important in helping attract economic development to a state.

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When Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said the Supreme Court would not formally adopt a code of ethics that is binding on lower court judges, he said he and his colleagues would keep following the rules that other judges follow when it comes to accepting and reporting on outside income, honoraria, and gifts.

On Tuesday, Justice Roberts gave his explanation in a letter to five Democratic senators. He alluded his year-end report on the judiciary, according to a Washington Post article, and to a 1991 ethics resolution adopted by the court:

“As you requested, we will make the 1991 resolution adopting the Judicial Conference regulations on gifts and on outside earned income available to the public. But for the reasons explained in my year-end report, the Court does not plan to adopt the Code of Conduct for United States Judges through a formal resolution.”

The resolution is available by clicking here.

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There is growing support in Tennessee’s legislature for a compromise plan to reform the way judges are held accountable, according to a (Nashville) Tennesseean article, and the state’s judges are said to agree to the compromise.

Gavel Grab has reported on Tea Party conservatives’  push for Tennessee legislators to take control over naming members of the discipline commission, called the Court of the Judiciary. The compromise version instead would make these changes:

• The Court of the Judiciary, as the state’s judicial discipline commission now is known, would be replaced by a new “board of judicial conduct.”
• All power to appoint members would be removed from the Tennessee Supreme Court, which now picks 10 of the 16 members. Read more

Tags: Tennessee

A Nashville Public Radio station has spotlighted a feature of partisan judicial elections that requires Republican-leaning voters  to pick between voting for a GOP presidential nominee in the primary, or for local judges, but not for both.

Early voting was underway in Tennessee’s presidential primary, WPLN reported, and voters in Nashville also are able to vote for local judges. But they can do the latter only if they select a Democratic ballot, because no Republicans are running in the Davidson County judicial elections.

Because Davidson County has trended  Democratic in recent decades, judicial candidacies are effectively decided by the Democratic primary, the report noted.

Tags: Tennessee

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• The Supreme Court added another 30 minutes to the five-and-a-half hour schedule for oral arguments next month over the new federal health care law, according to an article in The Hill. The arguments will be the longest in the high court’s modern history.
• William M. O’Neill, seeking the Democratic nomination to run for an Ohio Supreme Court seat, is campaigning with the theme “money and judges don’t mix” and a pledge to take “no money from nobody,” according to a Canton (Ohio) Repository article.
• Supporters of Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages in California that recently was declared unconstitutional by a three-judge federal panel, are asking the full Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their appeal, the Los Angeles Times reported.
• A suspect was arrested and charged in the recent robbery of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer when the judge was vacationing at the Caribbean island of Nevis, according to a CNN report.

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer have suggested the court reconsider its landmark 2010 campaign finance ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

They made their suggestion on Friday, when the high court put on hold a Montana Supreme Court decision to restore a century-old state ban on direct corporate campaign spending on candidates and committees, according to a Washington Post article. The Montana decision was widely seen as flying in the face of Citizens United, which permitted unlimited political spending by corporations and labor unions.

In Citizens United, a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court majority said such independent political spending does “not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” But Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, two of the dissenters, questioned on Friday whether that was correct given the shakeup in campaign finance practices since the opinion was issued:

“Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,’ ” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

“A petition for certiorari [from challengers of the Montana ruling] will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”

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During this session, New Hampshire legislators have taken aim at the state’s judiciary with little success so far, through proposals to severely limit the power of the courts or to change their face.

One bill aimed to re-establish a legislative check-and-balance over the courts that was in place before 1966, while another would have required lawyers to reach the age of 60 before serving on the bench.

Rep. Joshua Davenport was a primary Republican sponsor of the bill intended to “restore legislative control over the judiciary,” according to an article in the Nashua Telegraph. While the bill was killed, a sister version has survived. It would study what revisions to the law are necessary if the Supreme Court was abolished as a constitutional court.

A proposed constitutional amendment to reduce authority of the state Supreme Court failed. CACR 28 would have assigned to the legislature, instead of the Supreme Court, judicial review of the constitutional of laws enacted by the legislature. The proposal did not survive.

A proposal for a constitutional amendment that would  limit judges to five-year, renewable terms still is alive. In addition, the proposal would let the governor and Executive Council remove judges who did not “behave well.”

To read other Gavel Grab reports on the New Hampshire legislation, click here.

Tags: New Hampshire

BULLETIN: Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has told Congress that the Supreme Court has no plans to formally adopt rules binding it to the same code of conduct that governs other federal judges, the Associated Press reported.

The Supreme Court’s lack of openness in dealing with ethics questions and in refusing to permit televised oral arguments has undermined public trust in the court, a New York Times editorial says.

Entitled “Trust and the Supreme Court,” the editorial agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.’s recent assertion that it is the prerogative of the court, not Congress, to set rules for the court’s operations.

At the same time there is another way for the high court to bolster public confidence at the same time it responds to a bill advancing in the Senate for televising its public proceedings, and to a request from five Democratic senators to announce its ethics policies, the editorial says:

“They are good indicators of public concern, and the justices should take heed. The court should embrace sensible ethics rules and broadcast requests on its own.”

“With trust in government generally low, the justices need to find ways to bolster the public’s confidence without diminishing the court’s independence.”

To learn more about the Senate legislation, click here for Gavel Grab; and about the debate over an ethics code for the justices, click here.

In these other dispatches about fair and impartial courts:

• Minnesota business leaders are examining a new system of electing state judges, according to Chuck Slocum at the Minnesota Post. The plan would implement an independent commission to evaluate judges, and retention elections for incumbents. On Monday, Truth to Tell hosted an on-air interview concerning merit selection of judges.
• According to an article in the Arizona Republic, there is a growing debate over the value of appointments based on merit for justices of the peace. Advocates of merit selection believe it would improve judicial quality.
• Given the Ninth Circuit Court’s narrow decision, the Prop 8 case may avoid argument in the U.S. Supreme Court entirely, according to the New York Times. The future of same-sex marriage now depends on the wording of an appeal to the high court.
• Despite several notable attacks, Supreme Court justices still go without top security. Some justices cite this as a way to maintain anonymity, according to an article in the New York Times.
• PBS is broadcasting a film this week about the life of Thelton Henderson, one of the first African-American federal judges in the U.S. Justice at Stake’s own tribute to prominent African-American figures in the law can be found here.