Opinion ID: 1377460
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Business of Judging

Text: It is ironic that the majority panelentirely composed of pragmatic politician/judges who have substantial personal experience and understanding of the politics of judginghave chosen to affix their support to the majority opinion's erroneous rhetoric about courts being pure and above the fray of the world of politics. This rhetoric is, of course, poppycock. As one noted scholar put it: Whether judges are mere oracles of fixed and known legal principles is a question which most social scientists thought resolved more than fifty years ago by the realist revolution. The battle need not be fought again here. In the modern view, well established among political scientists, sociologists, and eminent legal thinkers, judges not only make conscious policy choices in the adjudication of cases and in the exercise of the power of judicial review, but also engage in political decision-making as a matter of function. The judges are [political] actors charged with special responsibilities, and their decisions... allocate values in society such as opportunity, liberty, money, protection, or representation in other types of decision-making. Like other political decision-making, this allocation of values is differential; that is, some individuals and groups are favored and others are disadvantaged. These policy outputs are called `justice.' At the appellate court level, judges are likely to confront policy choices directly in the course of developing common law principles and in interpreting state constitutional and statutory provisions. Even in the process of reviewing lower court decisions for procedural irregularities or substantive errors, however, appellate court decisions may serve to favor some kinds of interests while disadvantaging others, demonstrating thereby the political nature of the judicial function. This view of the judicial process does not posit that judges are merely politicians in robes or that judicial policy-making is exactly like that engaged in by legislatures and executives; these over-simplifications do not withstand even casual analysis. Nor does it deny that relatively few cases are explicitly partisan or ideological in nature or that many times judges are called upon to make relatively minor and technical adjustments in long-settled principles of law. But it does emphasize that judicial discretion is extensive and that judges are aware of the options available to them and the differential effects alternative choices will have upon individuals and groups affected by the litigation before them. Finally, of course, this conception of the political nature of judicial decision-making recognizes that judges frequently are able to develop common law, to interpret statutes and administrative regulations, and to adjudicate constitutional disputesall opportunities which allow judges explicitly to make, veto, legitimize, or reinforce public policies. Phillip L. DuBois, From Ballot to Bench, pp. 23-24, University of Texas 1978. Or as journalist Tom Miller more vernacularly opined in the April 3, 2000 edition of The Charleston Gazette: There was some talkbut not muchinstigated by the governor during the 2000 legislative session about the possibility of electing our Supreme Court justices in a nonpartisan election. Events in recent days prove how transparent that unlikely change would be. Just as there is nothing more partisan than the nonpartisan county board of education in the state's 55 counties, there would be nothing more partisan in state government than a nonpartisan Supreme Court. These five people get to make the final decisions on the tough political issues that the two other branches of government can often duck. Next on the table is the constitutional correctness of the $4 billion pension fund bond issue. Maybe the governor and Legislature should ask these folks to solve the Public Employees Insurance Agency funding problem. Last week, the court decided that gubernatorial candidate Denise Giardina can't have her cake and eat it too. By a 3-2 vote, the court refused to review a lower court ruling that as a member of an independent party, she can't get people who are registered with one of the two major political parties to sign her nominating petitions unless she warns them that this will prohibit them from voting in their own party's primary election in May. The week before, the court told one of its own, Justice Warren McGraw, he can't run for a 12-year term on the court while he's serving a shorter term. And before that it was the controversial rejection of Gov. Cecil Underwood's appointment of House Speaker Bob Kiss, D-Raleigh, to fill a seat on the court. These are partisan, political hot potatoes that demand partisan, political decisions. Probably no one among us can agree completely with all three rulings, but who can complain that they dodged the question? What did the Legislature do about third-party candidates? Last year lawmakers did remove the penalty for signing one of these nominating petitions and then voting in the Democratic or republican primary, but didn't change the section that says it still prohibits this double dipping by voters. Lawmakers also doubled the number of signatures required for third-party nominations for good measure. And why did a Republican governor appoint a Democrat to the court? For the likely reason that he wanted to curry favor with Democratic voters he needs so desperately in November to win another term, with the hope that it would be rejected so he could then name a Republican to appease his own grumbling GOP ranks. The partisan labels in the Supreme Court right now may more correctly be business and labor than Democrat and Republican, but partisanship is alive and flourishing. And changing the election labels won't alter those dynamics. Both academics and journalists agree that a necessary part of the business of judging is deciding difficult political issues. The art of good judging, as I see it (and I think most honest judges would agree), is doing so in a way that properly respects the structure of our democratic, constitutional system. It is utterly absurd to suggest that judges just apply the law, and do not make decisions that are influenced by their philosophiesor their prejudicesthe unfortunate term that the majority chooses to use. For example, my former colleague, Justice Margaret Workman, is (and was while she sat on this Court) strongly prejudiced toward helpless children. And whenever she could, she made judicial choices that favored those children. Some people thought that Justice Workman sometimes stretched the law to favor childrenand they were probably right. But she never, in my opinion, stretched it beyond the permissible bounds imposed by our constitutional, democratic system. The majority in this case, I suggest, are certainly bringing their prejudices, or philosophies, to the issues before them. There is nothing wrong with that. But they are also improperly stretching the law well beyond the limits of our Constitution. VIII.