ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT: Buying justice

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an editorial today that begins: "BIG BUSINESS won a nice return on a $4.3 million investment in Tuesday's election. It now has a friendly justice on the Illinois Supreme Court." and wonders "might the new justice be tempted to do favors for the interests that lavished millions on his campaign? Given Judge Karmeier's record in the lower courts, we believe he will proceed with integrity. But you couldn't blame a citizen for wondering if it's payback time."

ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT: Buying justice
Editorial
11/05/2004
BIG BUSINESS won a nice return on a $4.3 million investment in Tuesday's election. It now has a friendly justice on the Illinois Supreme Court.  Wealthy trial lawyers, meanwhile, can wonder whether the judge they tried hard to beat will be scowling at them from the highest bench in the state. And anyone who believes in evenhanded justice should be appalled at the spectacle of a big-money effort to buy a Supreme Court seat.

Republican Lloyd Karmeier, backed by $4.3 million in money from business, won election to a Southern Illinois seat on the high court. Democrat Gordon Maag lost despite $4.2 million kicked in by trial lawyers.

The results of the ugly, dispiriting, destructive, misleading, money-drenched race send two messages to the people of the state.  The first message is actually good news: The plaintiffs' lawyers' heavy influence over judgeships in Madison County may soon decline.  The second message: Illinois' system of electing judges is dangerously broken and subject to the sleazy influence of wealthy private interests. It should be replaced with a merit-selection system similar to Missouri's.
The voters of Southern Illinois were sold a Supreme Court justice with methods worse than those used to sell them laundry detergent. After all, soap commercials are cheery affairs about cleaning things up. Judge Maag's and Judge Karmeier's allies got into the gutter and tossed mud at each other. In their TV commercials, they traded charges about going easy on pedophiles and freeing torturers of old ladies. All those charges were distortions, and both men knew it.
That's a shame, because both built respectable records as judges in the lower courts. But after watching weeks of such shameful accusations, the average voter is bound to have lost respect for both men, as well as the Supreme Court itself.
After all, might the new justice be tempted to do favors for the interests that lavished millions on his campaign? Given Judge Karmeier's record in the lower courts, we believe he will proceed with integrity. But you couldn't blame a citizen for wondering if it's payback time.

Missouri has a better way of selecting judges for its urban areas and its appellate courts. A nonpartisan panel recommends three candidates to the governor, and he chooses one. The new judge later stands for a yes-no vote in a retention election. Politics still sneak into the process, although big money is kept out, and Missouri generally gets qualified and fair-minded judges.

Big money flowed into the Karmeier-Maag race because even bigger money is at stake. That includes a $10 billion judgment against a tobacco company from Madison County that is on appeal. It also involves an effort to bring evenhandedness to the plaintiffs' lawyers' paradise that is the Madison County courts.

For decades, plaintiffs' attorneys in Madison County have padded the election coffers of local judges with little push-back from business. Not quite coincidentally, the judges of Madison County smile sweetly on plaintiffs' attorneys. Such friendly judges, combined with the county's reputation for generous juries, make it a magnet for lawsuits from all over the country, most naming big businesses as defendants.

It also has scared the bejabbers out of medical malpractice insurance companies, contributing to sky-high malpractice rates that have set off an exodus of doctors from the Metro East.  That, more than anything else, probably explains why the Republican Karmeier won by a small margin in overwhelmingly Democratic Madison County, as well as across Southern Illinois. The voters like their doctors.

That message won't be lost on Madison County's lower-court judges, who must stand periodically for retention. Besides losing the race for the high court, Judge Maag also lost his own bid for retention as an appellate judge.

The American system works because people have faith in the fairness of the courts. At this point, the people of Southern Illinois may have more faith in their laundry detergent than in their judges. And who could blame them?