WASHINGTON — Elected judges must disqualify themselves from cases involving people who spent exceptionally large sums to put them on the bench, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.
Skip to next paragraph The decision, the first to say the Constitution’s due process clause has a role to play in policing the role of money in judicial elections, ordered the chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court to recuse himself from a $50 million case against a coal company whose chief executive had spent $3 million to elect him.
Thirty-nine states, including New York, elect at least some of their judges, and election campaigns, particularly for state supreme courts, have in recent years grown increasingly expensive and nasty. In the last decade, spending on elections for state high courts has reached $200 million, according to Justice at Stake, a group that tracks campaign spending. Elected judges routinely accept contributions from lawyers and litigants who appear before them, and they seldom disqualify themselves for cases involving donors.
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1 comment:
This is really strange as it's written in text books that Judge's can't hear cases they have an interest in. Now they have to be told the same thing in 2009. One might question what other laws our Judges have to be retaught again. Why are they Judges? If they don't know the law who does? I'll think a little differently when a Judge comes in to court and it's said All Raise, what for?
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