Selection Snapshots

As of mid-April, the three supreme court justices standing for retention in November had each raised between $156,000 and $160,000 for their retention effort, most of which came from lawyers and law firms. Committees handle the justices’ campaign finances, as the code of judicial conduct bars them from personally soliciting contributions.

In the context of retention opposition campaigns against three supreme court justices, the Florida Bar, the American Bar Association, and the League of Women Voters of Florida launched a “The Vote’s in Your Court” public education campaign.

An effort to impose seven-year term limits on judges failed to pass the house and is dead for this legislative session. New Hampshire is one of three states where judges serve for life, or to a mandatory retirement age of 70.

Of the races on the ballot in the May Democratic primary elections, the two supreme court races are the most expensive so far, with the six candidates having spent $1.4 million.

The governor asked a judicial nominating commission to submit the name of more than one candidate for a district court judgeship for which only four attorneys applied. All four applicants—two Republicans and two Democrats—are also running for the seat in November. The commission responded by soliciting additional applicants but did not promise to nominate more candidates.

Despite an earlier agreement to move forward with Senate confirmation of judicial nominees, Senator Al Franken and others report that the process remains acrimonious. Nearly one in 10 seats on the federal bench are currently empty.

A judicial selection task force made seven recommendations and offered draft legislation to improve the process for selecting supreme court justices. Recommendations including nominating candidates in open primaries rather than through party conventions, full disclosure of campaign spending, and the use of a vacancy nominating commission to fill judicial vacancies between elections.

The senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to appoint appellate judges with legislative confirmation. The proposal would give the general assembly sixty days to act on a nomination or it would automatically be confirmed. The house later approved the same measure. If approved by a two-thirds vote of the general assembly in 2013, the proposal will go before the voters in 2014.

The senate voted unanimously to replace the existing judicial disciplinary body—the court on the judiciary—with a new entity known as the board of judicial conduct. The state bar and the supreme court would no longer have a role in selecting members of the disciplinary body, and greater transparency in its work would be required.

Numbers may prevent a disciplinary complaint against Justice David Prosser from going any further. Prosser formally requested that two justices recuse themselves from consideration of the complaint against him, and he asked personally that two other justices recuse themselves, on the grounds that these justices were witnesses to the incident that gave rise to the complaint.