Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick offers a compelling analysis of the problems inherent in the effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices because of their votes in a gay marriage case. Lithwick, focusing on the recent speech given by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in favor of Iowa’s Merit Selection system, explains:
[W]hat O’Connor was arguing for has nothing to do with judicial politics or gay rights or constitutional interpretation, and everything to do with money and judicial elections. That shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
We agree and are pleased that in Pennsylvania, Merit Selection is an issue that unites Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, business-oriented organization
s and civic, religious and good government reform groups. The challenge is to translate what has become a growing concern about the corrosive effect of money in judicial elections into the impetus for meaningful reform.
As Lithwick explains:
What frightens O’Connor about judicial elections isn’t the idea of more accountability or transparency for judges: She favors that. . . . What scares O’Connor is that the millions of special interest dollars pouring into these judicial election campaigns will start to influence judges. She also worries that millions of dollars of special interest money pouring into judicial races tells the public exactly what [the leader of the vote no campaign] is trying desperately to prove in Iowa: It’s not just justice that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder, it’s the justices themselves.