Editorial: Judicial elections threaten justice

• Fundraising by candidates for state supreme courts has more than doubled in the past decade.
• In Florida and Iowa, conservatives are funding campaigns to oust judges because of particular rulings.
• Michigan Democratic Party has spent more than $2 million on TV ads, far outstripping the GOP.

Judicial elections used to be so quaint. Candidates didn't campaign, lest politics taint their independence. They just ran on their résumés.

Not so any more. In today's hyperpoliticized environment, judicial candidates routinely drum up money from campaign contributors who want to buy influence.

One barometer of the trend is fundraising by candidates for state supreme courts, which has more than doubled in the past decade as business groups and Republicans battled plaintiffs' lawyers, unions and Democrats to elect like-minded justices.

Worse yet, sitting judges who do their jobs, ruling impartially in accordance with state and federal constitutions, now face ouster at the hands of partisans who find such bedrock principles inconvenient.

In Florida and Iowa, conservative groups are lavishly funding campaigns to oust judges because of particular rulings. Some money fueling TV ads is untraceable, so the public might never know who a judge's benefactors are. Where donors are known, many are lawyers who appear before the very judges they're helping. How would you like to be on the other side of the courtroom from a lawyer who gave money to elect the presiding judge?

The political rot has spread so far that even judges appointed by merit selection are vulnerable.

In Florida, where voters approved a merit selection system in 1976 after years of judicial scandals, Republicans are trying to boot out the only three Democratic appointees on the state's highest court. The judges are on the ballot as part of the merit process, which provides for "retention elections," in which they face no opponent but can be removed if they fail to win a majority of the vote.

That process worked when judges were ousted only for malfeasance. But now their impartial constitutional judgments are subjected to political litmus tests.

Florida's chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a national group that opposes the 2010 health care law, has placed TV ads to "educate" voters about the judges' records. And if the judges lose, guess who appoints the replacements? Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who could remake the court as an all-Republican body. At least until Democrats get control and use the same tactics.

Similarly, in Iowa, social conservatives have attacked Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins in a retention election, after successfully targeting three of his colleagues in 2010.

The judges' sins? They read the state Constitution, as they're supposed to do, and concluded that it did not allow Iowa legislators to outlaw gay marriage. Never mind that the 2009 ruling was 7-0, included Republican and Democratic appointees, and didn't seem to be politically inspired.

The critics could have worked to pass a constitutional amendment to negate the ruling, which would seem the appropriate response. But these days, who has time for such niceties as respecting a Constitution or honest interpretation of it?

Not that Republicans have a monopoly on such ways.

In Michigan, which elects justices, Democratic and Republican nominees, including two incumbents, are battling for three seats on the state's top court. The state Democratic Party has spent more than $2 million on TV ads, far outstripping the GOP.

As retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted two years ago, "the last thing you want to worry about (when you got to court) is whether the judge is more accountable to a campaign contributor or an ideological group than to the law."

But that's what you get when politics corrupts the neutrality of courts.