The Herald-Dispatch cites Justice at Stake and the recently released "New Politics of Judicial Elections" report, co-authored by the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Citing the report, the article mentioned how the 2009-2010 judicial elections showed a "coalescing national campaign that seeks to intimidate America’s state judges into becoming accountable to money and ideologies instead of the constitution and the law."
A West Virginia Record article cites Justice at Stake and the recently released "New Politics of Judicial Elections" report, co-authored by the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Citing the report, the article reports that "West Virginia's failure to fully fund a public financing program for the state Supreme Court of Appeals election next year was a setback in the effort to reduce the influence of special interests in state court elections."
State Supreme Court Clerk Rory Perry says new rules requiring the Court to issue explanations for why every rejected case is not heard are working well so far.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Allen Loughry enters the 2012 race for West Virginia Supreme Court with not one, not two, not three, but four law degrees.
West Virginia is poised to make its initial attempt at public financing of statewide political campaigns in 2012 with a trial run in the two races for 12-year-terms on the five-member State Supreme Court of Appeals.
JAS statement on McComish v. Bennett: Today's ruling is disappointing, but not fatal for America’s courts. State judicial elections are drowning in special-interest spending. Properly crafted public financing laws are more critical than ever, so that judges do not have to dial for dollars from major donors who may appear before them in court.”
Two years have passed since West Virginia set a bad national example of questionable justice -- yet few reforms have followed the landmark lesson.
Two years after the Supreme Court delivered a “landmark lesson” about West Virginia justice, “scant correction has occurred” in the Mountain State or most of America, a Charleston Gazette editorial laments. Find out more in Gavel Grab.
The chief judge of a West Virginia Social Security claims court has given up his administrative post amid an internal probe of another judge’s unusually high approval rates for disability applicants, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Nearly two years after the Supreme Court’s Caperton v. Massey ruling on the influence of special-interest cash in the courtroom, most states have failed to adopt any reforms responding to threats identified in the landmark decision, the Brennan Center for Justice and Justice at Stake Campaign said today.
New independent report on disaster offers scathing indictment of company practices
A recent government report on the Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster in West Virginia not only blamed owner Massey Energy, but it also reprised the Supreme Court's Caperton v. Massey decision from 2009. See Gavel Grab for more.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McComish v. Bennett, which seeks to throw out a provision of Arizona’s public finance election law. The case could undermine the courts in four states, where similar laws protect judicial candidates from the impact of special-interest money.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Supporters of publicly financed judicial races are worried West Virginia won't have enough money for a pilot program meant to reduce the influence of special interests in state Supreme Court elections. On Saturday -- the last day of the legislative session -- members of the Senate Finance...
The initiation of a feasibility study for a business court and the establishment of an intermediate appellate court were two of the more attractive recommendations made by Gov. Joe Manchin's Independent Commission on Judicial Reform. The West Virginia Business Court Committee was established by the State Supreme Court last June...
CHARLESTON -- West Virginia Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin are asking President Barack Obama to nominate Circuit Court Judge Gina Marie Groh for a federal judgeship. Groh, currently a judge on the 23rd Judicial Circuit, which includes Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties, would fill the seat of U.S. District...
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The state's two U.S. senators have recommended an Eastern Panhandle circuit judge for a federal judgeship based in Martinsburg. Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin asked President Obama to nominate Gina Marie Groh for the seat on the federal bench left vacant after U.S. District Judge W....
CHARLESTON -- The push for an intermediate appellate court is now headed to the House of Delegates. The state Senate on Wednesday passed a bill to create a three-judge panel to hear appeals. The Senate vote was 24-9. The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 307, would create the court that would...
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Warning that a “deluge of special interest money is eroding public trust in America’s courts,” Justice at Stake and 14former jurists have warned the U.S. Supreme Court that elected courts would be gravely threatened by outside influence if the Court strikes down a key provision used in many state public financing laws.
In an amicus brief filed Feb. 22 in McComish v. Bennett, the non partisan reform group said, “Public financing eliminates the need for judges to‘dial for dollars’ from major contributors, many of whom appear before them in court. It is therefore one of the most powerful reforms in shielding courts from special-interest influence.” The jurists signing the brief included 13 former state supreme court justices and a former trial court judge.
Who really is affected when the scales of justice are tilted by special interest money? In a speech, Hugh Caperton answered that question eloquently -- and from personal experience. See details in Gavel Grab.
Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy whose big spending to elect a top West Virginia judge led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision, has suddenly stepped down. See details in Gavel Grab.
Eric Sandberg-Zakian has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Arkansas Law Review). Here is the abstract: In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company, the Supreme Court held that litigants have a constitutional right to a judiciary free from a serious risk of actual bias, but attempted to limit the reach...
After he was questioned in the blogosphere, a West Virginia Supreme Court justice did a turnabout and announced he was disqualifying himself from a case. Read more in Gavel Grab.
A West Virginia Supreme Court justice has refused to take himself out of a case involving the state cap on non-economic damages, even though he pledged during his election campaign that he would never vote to overturn the law imposing the cap. Justice Menis Ketchum of the state Supreme Court...
The Justice at Stake Campaign and a partner, the Brennan Center for Justice, have unveiled a new website featuring data on national TV spending, candidate fundraising and key political players in 2010 state high-court elections, which may be unprecedented in their character. State Supreme Court retention (up-or-down) elections in four...
