Lenny Bruce said, “In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.”
Louisiana takes that statement to its logical conclusion, but it’s not the only state.
This story is followed by my post of October 2, 2006
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 29, 2008
Sidebar
Looking Anew at Campaign Cash and Elected Judges
By ADAM LIPTAKVernon Valentine Palmer, a law professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, could not understand how justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court could routinely hear cases involving people who had given them campaign contributions. It seemed to him a raw and simple conflict of interest.
So he wrote polite letters to each of the seven justices, urging them to adopt a rule that would make disqualification mandatory in those cases.
Six months passed without a single response, and he wrote again. “I used seven more stamps,” he said, “and I still got no reply.”
Professor Palmer is a senior member of the Tulane law faculty and the director of its European legal studies program. He is not an expert on judicial ethics, but he knows a thing or two about the rule of law.
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Ruling on Contributors’ Cases
“A New York Times analysis of decisions by the Ohio Supreme Court from 1994 to March 2006
found that the justices frequently decided in favor of their campaign contributors who appear
before the court, and rarely recuse themselves from those cases.”
Judge
Reinhold-
S.A.G.N/A now!! Hollywood? Comedic! 0 Points? No Net See IMDb
for all films
involving
Judge
Reinhold
Roy Bean
Law
West
o’ the
Pecos.Where?
When?
Please
lemme
know,ok!I’d like ta
see ya try
‘n prove it!Records? Anyone
seen it?Myths!! Best
mind
yer own
beeswax!*
Graphic is from the New York Times…except for some additions.*
“Notes: Data are based on nonunanimous cases, excluding procedural decisions, decided from 1994 to March 2006. Contributors are defined as parties in cases or groups that filed supporting briefs who gave at least $1,000 in the six years before the court decision. The voting patterns of two former justices — the late Asher W. Sweeney, who retired in 1994, and J. Craig Wright, who retired in 1996 — were omitted from the study because complete campaign contribution data were unavailable.”Please find this story and many other graphs here.
