A new public opinion poll in North Carolina show just how corrosive judicial elections are to public confidence in a fair and impartial judiciary. The poll, which was conducted by the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, and our friends at the Justice at Stake Campaign, ” finds that 94 percent of North Carolina voters believe campaign contributions have some sway on a judge’s decision, including 43 percent who say campaign donations can greatly affect a ruling.”
“Trust in the courts is eroded when judges have to dial for dollars from parties who appear before them,” said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of Justice at Stake, and we couldn’t agree more. Poll after poll after poll has shown that the public is convinced that the decisions of elected judges are influenced by campaign donations.
States have tried several ways to combat this perception. North Carolina has a first-in-the-nation system of public financing that allows judicial candidates (who can raise a small initial fund) to run for the bench without having to assemble huge campaign warchests. Recently, court rules in New York were modified to prevent court administrators from assigning a case to a judge if any of the lawyers or participants in the case donated $2,500 or more in the previous two years.
Our opinion is that the best way to restore trust in the impartiality of Pennsylvania’s appellate courts is to relieve our appellate court judges and justices of the burden of campaign financing in the first place. If campaign donations don’t play a role in putting appellate judges on the bench, then the public doesn’t have to wonder if those donations had an influence on the way those judges rule. That’s why we believe Merit Selection is a superior solution.
