Earlier this month the Supreme Court ruled
that elected judges must recuse themselves from the bench when their
own big donors' interests are at stake. With Illinois' judicial races
raising record-setting amounts of campaign cash -- becoming a national
example of a system is ripe for abuse -- the decision is already
sending ripples through the state's legal community. Northwestern
University law professor John McGinnis tells the St. Louis Post Dispatch
that the ruling is likely to open "a Pandora's box," inspiring a flood
of claims that judges in the Prairie State themselves should have opted
for recusal.
The only way to avoid this avalanche of complaints, legal experts
agree, is for the legislature or high court to step in and clarify
exactly what is the threshold for impartiality. The Dispatch explains this "quandary":
While the high court made it clear that judges shouldn't hear
cases involving big-time donors, it didn't establish an amount that
should disqualify a judge. Is it $10,000? $100,000? $1 million. Also,
will states need to pass new ethical guidelines to comply with the
ruling, or will more drastic changes be needed, such as changing the
entire system for choosing its judiciary?
This year Illinois lawmakers blew an historic opportunity to curb
the influence of campaign cash in judicial elections, and that's left the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform's
David Morrison with little confidence that the General Assembly is up
for any sort of fundamental reform. "The Supreme Court is absolutely
right that the judges look like they're being bought," he tells us,
pointing out that many of the largest donations in judicial races have
been funneled through party leaders.
With incumbents, along with committeemen, set to wield a great deal
of political influence in the 2010 election cycle, ICPR says it's no
wonder that substantive reforms -- including Sen. Kwame Raoul's proposal
for publicly-financing certain judicial races -- were sidelined.
There's a lot at stake next year with four seats on the Illinois
Supreme Court potentially up for grabs (depending upon whether the
justices run for retention or decide to retire), along with a host of
statewide appelate court races.
Now Morrison is pinning his hopes on the Supreme Court stepping in
to settle the underlying question: At what point do campaign
contributions amount to influence peddling? At the state level, he
says, "the only real solution is to insulate judges from this kind of
financing."
