August, 16 2010, 09:38am EDT
![Brennan Center for Justice](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012660/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Charles Hall, Justice at Stake, 202-588-9454, chall@justiceatstake.org; or
Jeanine
Plant-Chirlin, Brennan Center for Justice,
at 212-998-6289 or jeanine.plant-chirlin@nyu.edu.
Is Justice for Sale?
Report Cites Exploding Costs, Role of Special Interests in State Court Elections; Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Warns of ‘Crisis of Confidence’
WASHINGTON
Spending on state Supreme Court elections has more than doubled
in the past decade, from $83.3 million in 1990-1999 to $206.9 million in
2000-2009, and deep-pocketed special interests play a dominant role in choosing
state jurists, according to a report released today.
For
more than a decade, partisans and special interests of all stripes have grown
more organized in their efforts to tilt the scales of justice their way. This
surge in spending-much of it funneled through secret channels-has
fundamentally transformed state Supreme Court elections.
The
report, "The New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2000-2009: Decade of
Change," is the first comprehensive study of spending in judicial
elections over the past decade. It was released today by the Justice at Stake
Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and the National
Institute on Money in State Politics.
In
a foreword, Sandra Day O'Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice, warned
that elected judges are widely seen by the public as beholden to campaign benefactors
who sometimes spend millions to sway court races.
"This
crisis of confidence in the judiciary is real and growing," Justice
O'Connor warned. "Left unaddressed, the perception that justice is
for sale will undermine the rule of law that the courts are supposed to
uphold."
An
Executive Summary of the report is
available here. Among the report's key findings:
-
Spending
records were repeatedly shattered nationally and by state throughout the
decade. Candidates raised $206.9 million in 2000-2009, compared with $83.3
million in the 1990s. Twenty of the 22 states that hold at least some
competitive elections for judges had their most expensive election ever in the
last decade. -
A
select group of "super spenders" is outgunning small donors. In the
29 costliest elections in 10 states, the top five spenders each averaged
$473,000 per election to install judges of their choice, while all other contributors
averaged only $850 apiece. -
Judicial
elections are increasingly focusing not on competence and fairness, but on
promising results in the courtroom after election day. The tort reform wars
have driven this trend, with a half-dozen national business-funded groups, and
leaders of such corporate giants as Home Depot and AIG insurance, squaring off
against plaintiffs' attorneys and unions. -
A
TV spending arms race continues to escalate, creating a need for money that
only special interests can satisfy. In 2007-08, $26.6 million was spent on
Supreme Court TV ads, the costliest two-year ad cycle since tracking began in
2000. For the decade, supreme court candidates, special-interest groups and
political parties spent an estimated $93.6 million on TV ads. -
Special
interests are committed to dismantling spending limits, eliminating merit
selection of judges, and keeping campaign spending secret by assaulting decades
of disclosure laws. A campaign is underway to persuade federal courts to
downplay the Constitution's due process guarantee by reinterpreting the
he First Amendment to gut and weaken federal and state election laws. -
Many
judicial election spenders, including plaintiffs' lawyers and
corporations, have a passion for secrecy-using shell organizations to
keep their role out of the public eye. Such strategies are likely to continue
even after Citizens United, a Supreme Court decision that allowed
corporate and union spending in elections. This could make a true accounting of
special-interest spending impossible in 2010 and beyond.
"The
next decade will be a perilous time for fair courts," said Bert
Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, a legal
reform group based in Washington. "For more than two centuries, Americans
have counted on judges to ignore political pressure. But the flood of
special-interest money is changing that. Without reforms, there is a real
risk of irreversible damage to public confidence in our courts."
According
to numerous polls taken throughout the decade, public concern is
widespread and bipartisan. Three in four Americans believe campaign cash
can affect courtroom decisions, and nearly half of state judges polled-46
percent-agree.
The
report is authored by James Sample, professor at Hofstra University Law
School, Adam Skaggs and Jonathan Blitzer of the Brennan Center for Justice,
Linda Casey of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Charles Hall
of the Justice at Stake Campaign is the Editor.
"The
issues detailed in this report transcend America's partisan
divisions," said Sample, the report's lead author. "At
least when it comes to the courts, concern over the influence of green is not a
matter of red versus blue."
"This
explosion in spending fuels the growing public concern that judges will favor
the biggest spenders," said Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center.
"And with the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United,
the amount of money flowing into judicial elections isn't likely to
diminish any time soon. That will mean increasing special interest pressures on
judges - and increasing public concern that justice is for sale."
One
positive cited in the report was a growing public desire to insulate courts
from special-interest money. States like Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina,
West Virginia, and Wisconsin are responding to the new politics of judicial
elections with tools like public financing of judicial elections, consideration
of new judicial appointment/retention
election systems, and tougher ethics rules forcing judges to sit out cases
involving financial benefactors.
Justice
O'Connor, who has championed court reforms since retiring from the U.S.
Supreme Court in 2006, said in her letter introducing the report, "We all
have a stake in ensuring that courts remain fair, impartial, and independent.
If we fail to remember this, partisan infighting and hardball politics will
erode the essential function of our judicial system as a safe place where every
citizen stands equal before the law."
The Brennan Center for Justice is a nonpartisan law and policy institute. We strive to uphold the values of democracy. We stand for equal justice and the rule of law. We work to craft and advance reforms that will make American democracy work, for all.
(646) 292-8310LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular