Posted on 12/10/2010 6:12:18 AM PST by iowamark
...a suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court... seeking to disqualify seven of the 15 members of a commission that will recommend finalists to replace three Iowa Supreme Court justices ousted after legalizing gay marriage....
In court records, [attorney James] Bopp said that since only lawyers can vote in those elections, average citizens are shut out and do not have equal participation in the process.
The suit asks a judge to issue a restraining order to stop the seven commission members --- all elected through the Iowa State Bar Association --- from recommending finalists to the governor to replace Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and justices David Baker and Michael Streit.
In a statement on Thursday, Bopp said the lawsuit aims to change a system that "gives attorneys a stranglehold on the judiciary." He said the process should continue without their participation.
"Lawyers in Iowa have enormous influence over who the state judges are, while the ordinary voter is denied the right to an equal voice," he said.
Voters removed three Supreme Court justices from office last month in a retention election after conservatives accused them of overstepping their bounds by participating in a 7-0 ruling last year that legalized gay marriage. Justices found the state constitution did not permit gays and lesbians to be excluded from marriage rights.
Local Attorney David Dutton said the suit seems to want to return the state to judicial elections...
In addition to the members selected through state bar elections, the nominating panel includes seven members appointed by the governor with state Senate confirmation, and the longest-serving justice who serves as chair. Other than the justice, each serves a six-year term. The commission was created by Iowa voters in 1962 as part of a constitutional amendment adopting a merit-selection system for judges...
(Excerpt) Read more at wcfcourier.com ...
""Four Iowa voters filed suit yesterday in federal court to stop the dominating influence of attorneys over the system for selecting state judges in Iowa, arguing that this influence denies ordinary Iowa voters an equal voice in selecting justices for the Iowa Supreme Court.
Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their retention elections this November. Under Iowa law, nominations for their replacements are made by the fifteen member State Judicial Nominating Commission. Only candidates nominated by the Commission may be appointed by the Governor. Since all nominees allowed to move forward by the Commission may be opposed to the Governor, the Commission, and not the people, has complete control over who becomes a judge in Iowa. Seven of Commission members are selected in elections in which only attorneys can vote. The current system thus guarantees lawyers a far greater say than ordinary citizens in Iowa in selecting judges who have great power and control over the lives of regular citizens.
The suit asks the court to stop the elected members of the Commission from participating in the nomination process and to stop any future election restricted to attorneys. The Commission can go forward and make its nominations without attorney member participation. According to attorney James Bopp, Jr., lead counsel for the plaintiffs, the Iowa system “gives attorneys a stranglehold on the judiciary. Lawyers in Iowa have enormous influence over who the state judges are, while the ordinary voter is denied the right to an equal voice.”
The case is Carlson, et al. v. Cady, et al. The complaint and memorandum supporting the motion for a temporary restraining order are available in PDF format online at the James Madison Center’s website, www.jamesmadisoncenter.org.""
There is absolutely no reason for the state bar to be choosing judges. Nobody cares if they recommend them, but the Governor shold appoint his own choices.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101210/NEWS/12100348/1001/Lawsuit-filed-over-justice-selection
“Lawsuit filed over justice selection”
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20101210/NEWS/12100349/1001/NEWS/Lawyer-all-4-plaintiffs-have-GOP-backgrounds
“Lawyer, all 4 plaintiffs have GOP backgrounds”
There is a commission that recommends judicial candidates, usually a slate of 8 or so, but the governor doesn't have to appoint from that list (and the governor recently did just that - bypassed the list to appoint somebody else).
And the governor only appoints in the case of resignation or removal, otherwise there are contested elections.
If a judge is a real bad actor, somebody will run against him.
I really question, though, who the fellow bringing this suit thinks is going to be able to choose judges, if not attorneys. Most of the electorate here can't even be bothered to vote in a contested judicial election, let alone actually spend time selecting the best candidate.
Isn’t Soros trying to prevent direct election of judges?
I think the lawsuit makes it clear that having a JD degree should not be the qualifier.
You make a good point about lazy voters, but anything is better than the Democrat party apparatus picking the judges.
>>>>There is absolutely no reason for the state bar to be choosing judges.
They’re not - entirely/directly. The judicial nomination commission is composed of 14, hald appointed by the bar, half by the governor.
http://theiowarepublican.com/home/2010/07/25/judicial-nominating-commissions-merit-or-partison/
That article pretty much covers what we’re stuck with... and in this so called “merit” system for selecting judges, the only qualification that merits selection to the bench is how much and how often you’ve donated money to Democrats in Iowa.
This isn’t going to be fixed by the Federal court. It needs to be fixed by the Iowa Legislature, and people of Iowa.
Somewhere Iowa went off the track and regressed to the Federalist idea that only one person should have the franchise when it comes to selecting judges ~ to wit, the President.
That notion, of course, went right down the tube when Thomas Jefferson simply FIRED a bunch of federal judges of whom he did not approve when he took office ~ thereby neatly getting around the "remuneration shall not be diminished" standard AND the fact federal judges seemed to have unlimited appointments.
Later on during the period of initial organization and settlement of the Old Northwest ALL the judges in the new state governments were set up as elected jobs with limited terms.
The same was true in the Louisiana Territory (of which Iowa was once a part).
Jefferson, the President who fired judges, preferred that they also be elected by the people.
The modern standard adopted in too many states is that ONLY QUALIFIED people should be selected to be judges, and the franchise should be restricted to the Governor.
Obviously this is not a Jeffersonian idea, and it does run counter to not only early United States history, but to recent United States history.
Restriction of the franchise to lawyers is as ridiculous as restricting it to property owners of $5 billion net worth would be. If anything, our most recent experience with lawyers suggests that they should be TOTALLY DISENFRANCHISED. If they are to be officers of the court, they should be restricted to that job, and not allowed to be members of legislatures, nor commissions, nor any other office of profit or trust. Even if elected as a judge (yes, I'd let them run for judgeships) they should be forced to resign from the bar and foreswear any future membership in the bar. They can be a judge or a lawyer but not both!
The franchise for electing judges should be stripped from the governors and commissions and returned to the people as a whole.
This sounds like one lawsuit I could wholeheartedly support.
Non-lawyers as judges used to be possible in Georgia back when we had the J.P. (Justice of the Peace) system. They were all elected from the old militia districts which still exist but aren't used any more. In fact, I tried a case in front of a non-lawyer judge, Sarge Mashburn who was a J.P. out in Gwinnett County. Very nice man and he had been on the bench for quite awhile so he knew the ropes, and it was a pretty straightforward case. It worked out o.k. My dad also told me about a superior court judge who used to be a barber before he was a judge -- but I think he went to law school in between.
But it was a very limited system, and there were severe problems when a non-lawyer J.P. got hold of a complicated case. A lot of time and money was spent trying to clean up the mistakes they made - and it wasn't always possible. The J.P.s were eventually abolished, and that was a good thing on balance.
If some lawyers (and more importantly, the clients) had a complicated contract case in front of a journeyman judge with no legal training when he's just come on the bench, it would be an unmitigated disaster. Judging may not be rocket science, but it's become quite technical and complicated, and there's usually a substantial amount of money at stake. Not to mention people's freedom.
And the Georgia General Assembly has been experimenting a bit with non-lawyers writing laws (the number of lawyers in the GA has dropped precipitously, nobody's sure why). It doesn't work worth a darn. There are incredibly bad unintended consequences, a lot of confusion, and substantial financial costs for the poor schmoos who get caught in the toils of the law.
A hybrid system like the Georgia one works pretty well, the voters can throw a bad judge out on his ear if somebody's mad enough to run against him. But asking non-lawyers to be judges is like giving a guy off the street a box of tools and telling him to replace the fuel injector on your Maserati. It won't end well.
We kept lawyers on staff to "review" ~ not "write".
Fact is, legislation, regulations, handbooks, and public notices written by lawyers, or even committees of lawyers are litigation bombs waiting to blow up.
You must write the rules that control the margins of your society in the common tongue ~ not jargon.
I think the STATE needs to provide judges with lawyers to advise them ~ not just prosecutors and defense counsel.
Some people have a natural talent to be judges ~ some don't ~ most lawyers don't. With Georgia running out of lawyers your talented bench available for service on the bench is declining as well, and maybe dangerously so.
Again, bring in people who can judge ~ and provide them with legal assistants.
That's what we do with the Supreme Court ~ after all some of those people were NEVER practicing lawyers, and some of them did law so long ago they don't remember what it was about. Still, I bet even Ginsburg could run a bench all day long (with her staff available to deal with the questions). At the same time the guys on her staff probably couldn't hold up in 20 minutes of traffic court.
It did not work. I did insurance litigation for 15 years, and we shuddered when we saw one of those "plain language policies" coming. You think it's 'the common tongue', but nobody knows what it means from a binding, legal point of view.
Same thing with construction contracts. The AIA Standard Form is the way to go because every word has been litigated and has a single meaning. Many words in everyday language have multiple meanings, and most ordinary conversations assume a great deal that isn't said. That leads to problems when binding legal meaning is placed on ordinary conversational English. Those contracts drawn up on notebook paper on the tailgate of a pickup truck are just fine until the parties have a disagreement and nobody can agree exactly what they meant by "rain day".
I thought our residential contractor was going to bust a gut laughing when we handed him a standard AIA form. But later, when he tried to weasel out of the completion date, "rain day" was precisely defined and the allowance for completion was specified.
There was a political appointment here a number of years ago. Nice lady, a law school classmate of mine, but very little actual courtroom experience (she was primarily a politician and her law practice was limited to bond issues, I think). A Great Moment in Legal History when at an arraignment one of the lawyers asked for a Jackson-Denno hearing, and she responded, "How soon can you have Mr. Jackson and Mr. Denno here?"
Multiple face-palms all down the bar.
That's not necessarily a case of using jargon ~ it's called adjusting for risk ~ probably more like trying to describe an actuarial table in the course of defining "policyholder". When it comes to the type of federal regulation that might well be read by 250 million Americans, it has to be in a language they can understand, and that their lawyers can understand too.
Not to say I'm smarter than a bunch of lawyers, but, yes, it's true, some people are just naturally so.
At any one time there are no more than a couple of dozen people in Washington with the ability to write legislation and regulations correctly. They are kept busy at that until they're worn out. Eventually Congress will have to hire a couple to deal with the problem.
I'll agree with you that Federal regs are beyond ridiculous.
Sounds horrible. It is horrible. She was just walking across an airport concourse and broke her ankle ~ no stumble ~ nothing ~ just brittle bones giving way.
Sorry to hear that the ladies are in such bad health.
You bring in lawyers to REVIEW the rule to provide counsel as necessary. But you don't let them write any of the words.
I was usually unsuccessful in convincing CPAs of the fact that they were ONLY to review the accounting features and standards, NOT REWRITE THE RULES.
Accountants appear to be constitutionally incapable of writing anything anyone can understand. Lawyers try, but they are trained to obfuscate and confuse.
Oh the Huge Manitee!
Be interesting to know the full health status of the whole crowd up there.
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