The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law recently published “The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2011-12—How New Waves of Special Interest Spending Raised the Stakes for Fair Courts.” The center, which has been studying the subject since 2000, emphasized “the increased politicalization and escalating spending in state judicial campaigns, as well as the growing role of special interest money.” In 2012, $29.7 million was spent on television ads in judicial campaigns, and it was reported that $33.7 million was spent on television ads, with $15.4 million spent by special interest groups, on elections to state high courts races in 2011-12. In one form or another, 38 states elect justices to their highest courts.
Last June, the American Constitution Society published a report by Professor Joanna Shepherd of Emory Law School titled “Justice at Risk, an empirical analysis of campaign contributions and judicial decisions.” Shepherd noted that almost 90 percent of state court judges are elected in some way or another, either initially or by retention, and that since the U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, there have been more interest-group contributions to the election campaigns of judges and a perceived, if not statistically documented, belief that judges’ decisions are affected by the contributions they receive and “an ever-increasing importance of money in judicial elections.”
