For the last few years, voters and politicians alike have shown their extreme concern about judges with a “political” agenda serving time on any bench. Equal time has been spent by conservatives and liberals alike about judges who “legislate” from the bench. In simple terms, if we disagree with a judge’s decision, that judge must have “an agenda”.
Arkansas Appellate Court Judge Wendell Griffen and Roger Harrod are both running for open seats on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Both men are CAMPAIGNING openly with political agendas of their own, and we are left wondering how either can possibly not enter into a court room with prejudices already firming in place? Appointees for US Supreme Court seats are loathe to speak too freely during confirmation hearings about issues that may come before the Supreme Court, giving a more reasonable response that it would be unfair to judge any case based on general notions rather than on the finer legal points pertaining to each case.
What is a voter to do, then, when candidates for a state Supreme Court seat work to garner our support not by touting their legal experiences but rather by telling us what they think? Here is the twist: Judge Griffen is being investigated by the state’s judicial commission for violating the state’s code of judicial conduct, which requires that a candidate to judicial office “maintain the dignity appropriate to judicial office.”
So he’s running for office and he is speaking to issues about which he is passionate and he has to get out in front of voters who will ultimately decide whether he can have the state Supreme Court seat, and he is being “investigated” for somehow diminishing the dignity of the office?
I grow very tired of hearing Judge Griffen tell me (a voter) how bad things are for black Americans and how President Bush is responsible for Hurricane Katrina and how the president must have, by design, made it hard for all those (black Americans) who refused to leave to get out once New Orleans was virtually under water. This man has a spike in his boot about just about anything relative to conservative issues and religion in general and “whitey”. However, is he not free to speak up?
The judicial commission gets to decide how far an appellate judge can go in speaking up in public. Is this fair? Would we be better off somehow if all judges; regardless of local, state, or federal level; were to be appointed by the mayor or the governor or the president? We seem to have a problem with judges getting a lifetime appointment, but we now seem to have a problem with potential justices (and sitting judges) speaking out loud from beyond the bench as if they are not entitled to their own human prejudices and frailties and failures.
We just can’t seem to make up our minds.
2 comments:
I'm uncomfortable with elected judges. It's better for a judge to be accountable to the law, rather than the voters. That's just verbiage, of course. But it's valuable for a judge to be accountable only to his own conscience.
Like you, John, I'm not very comfortable judges as "candidates" who will tend to say or do whatever it takes to be elected.
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