Keep the politics and money out of judicial selections

By Mason City Globe Gazette

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Anyone who thinks Iowa should change the way it selects judges need look no farther than Wisconsin to see an example of the wrong way to do it.

The race between Justice David Prosser and challenger Jo Anne Kloppenburg for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court shows partisan politicking and big money influence peddling at its worst.

Waged against the backdrop of a fight to fundamentally change the way public unions operate in that state, the race for the judicial seat attracted more than $3.5 million in campaign expenditures by outside groups trying to influence the outcome.

It was money spent by the unions and by big businesses who know that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to take collective bargaining rights away from public unions is more than likely going to end up before the state high court. Whoever wins the seat on that court will be able to have a great deal of say in the decision the court makes.

Even though both Prosser and Kloppenburg appear to be well-qualified judges, either of whom could perform satisfactorily on the Supreme Court, that's not the kind of argument that wins elections, especially when outside interests and their money push the race deeper and deeper into the mud. Instead the voters of the Badger State heard claims of weakness on crime, being too liberal or too conservative, being a “rubber stamp” for Walker, even being soft on sex offenders.

Although Kloppenburg pulled ahead in early results, a bizarre turn came recently with the discovery of some 14,000 previously uncounted ballots, throwing the margin to Prosser.

Whoever eventually takes the seat, the people of Wisconsin will have to wonder when the public union case finally comes before the court just how much influence the millions of dollars in special interest campaign spending bought, and how much it affected whether public unions in that state will be busted or not.

Compare that to the way justices are decided in Iowa, where a commission weighs the credentials and experience of applicants for positions on the district court and higher, then makes recommendations based on the candidates' merits. The governor then chooses a judge from the slate sent by the commission.

Unfortunately, an element of partisan politics has been introduced into the Iowa process recently, with the successful effort to turn down three Iowa Supreme Court justices in their bids for retention.

The judges weren't kicked off the bench because they were unfit to hold the positions, but because a majority of voters responded to an organized campaign (backed, incidentally, by money from out-of-state groups) to punish the justices for their part in a unanimous court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the state.

The retention vote for judges should not be a referendum on the popularity of the rulings they make. No judge should ever decide a case based on how he thinks it might affect his chances to keep his job.

Politicizing the courts is a huge and dangerous step backward from the merit-based system Iowa now has, and threatens to erode the trust that people must have in the fairness of the judicial system for it to be effective.

An example of the dangers of moving further along that path exists just across the border, in our neighbor to the northeast.