Elected Judges and Increasing Partisanship

Business Week (subscription required) has an interesting article in its September 27 edition.  I can't link to it, but it essentially covers the role that big issues play in the election of state judges.  For example, 

[P]artisans battle over tort reform. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce; big companies such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart Stores, and American International Group; and some small businesses are in one camp. Plaintiffs' law firms and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America make up the other. These two sides focus largely on state judges, who hear the majority of the big product-liability and consumer-protection cases that make Wall Street shudder. For the past decade or so momentum has been on the side of the business community, which helped oust incumbents in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina in 2000. This year the Chamber will be active in about half the nation's court races. "We've declared war on judges who aren't doing their duty," says Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot Inc., who has worked closely with the Chamber.

One other interesting item is a statistic from a survey that says that 46% of elected judges say campaign contributions influence their decisions.

cite for article..

Title: THE BATTLE OVER THE COURTS ,  By: France, Mike, Woellert, Lorraine, Grow, Brian, Business Week, 0007-7135, September 27, 2004, Issue 3901

Update:  My new editor has asked me to do the impossible.  The good Sisters of Charity and of the Holy Cross couldn't get me to spell correctly, MS Word only barely helps, and the spell checker in my blog api can't work miracles with my original grey matter.

Comments

[david giacalone]

Is "grey" a professorial affectation or are you a secret British agent?

Just try your best, Martin, and remember that I have limited stamina and almost no attention span.