Keeping Courts Impartial Amid Changing Judicial Elections

The breakthrough year for big-money court campaigns was 2000, when supreme court candidates raised a record $45.6 million - a 61 percent increase over the previous election cycle - and political parties and interest groups spent at least $10 - $16 million more on independent TV ads.6 Although the growth in total spending was sudden and dramatic, at that point the problem seemed confined to battleground states like Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Ohio. 12 Once independent expenditures are factored in, these dollar figures climb much higher.\n27 Another reform gaining increasing attention - as campaign fund-raising explodes and constraints on campaign conduct shrink - is to assure, for cases in which a sitting judge's fairness is reasonably in question, that judges be recused or disqualified where appropriate (and that recusal requests be independently adjudicated).28 Because turnout in judicial elections is so low, allowing interest groups to dominate them by turning out their base, serious reform should include measures to boost voter participation.