Of those
judicial selection methods, Shepherd then looked to see which justices’
decisions were most influenced by big campaign contributions. It’s no surprise:
justices that were elected to the bench
through a partisan election were much more likely to make judicial decisions
based on the amount of campaign contributions they had received. The reasoning
is simple. “When judges are elected, that means they have to raise campaign
money — a lot of money, in fact. And the amounts in question have risen considerably
in recent decades.” Judges, whether consciously or not, are more likely to rule
in favor of businesses that have donated to their campaign in order to ensure
that the campaign donations won’t dry up in the future.
The
statistics from Shepherd’s study tell the same story: “…a justice getting 1 percent of his
contributions from business would vote for business 46.5 percent of the time. However, a justice getting 25 percent of contributions from business would vote in
its favor 62.1 percent of the time.” As further evidence, Shepherd notes that, “In
the last term before mandatory retirement, the favoritism toward business
litigants by judges facing partisan and non-partisan elections essentially
disappears,” which shows that judges are less likely to vote pro-business when
they no longer need to raise money.
I think there are many who think of judges as politicians in robes. In many states, that’s what they are … They seem to think judges should be a reflex of the popular will.
— Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,making “a plea for preserving the impartiality and independence of the American judicial system,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
One must ask: Are partisan elections a good idea?
