Judicial restraint

No way to pick judge

— Ido not know Jo Hart, justice-elect to a pinnacle of prominence, the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The only time I ever saw her was on television.

All of a sudden her visage came at me startlingly through the small screen.

She spouted numbers about the abundance of cases she’d heard as a local judge and appeals court judge. She said it was important that people knew that her husband of great duration was still her best friend. She smiled forcibly as if instructed as she said it.

She boasted that she had been a “full-bird colonel” in the military and was a no-nonsense judge.

This was a memorable and seminal moment for me.

That’s because her opponent in the Supreme Court race, farmerlawyer Raymond Abramson of Holly Grove, was a close personal friend of mine.

Until that moment I had assumed he would win on account of his early declaration of candidacy, his raising of a significant chunk of money and his locking-down of hard-earned support in the legal and political establishments.

But I knew I had just beheld one of the worst and best political commercials ever.

It was crudely produced and clumsily executed. But it carried one lingering and powerful message: That woman is a dadgummed full-bird colonel and she is tough and experienced and she doesn’t take any guff. She looks to me like just what we need up there on that whatever-it-is—Supreme Court? She’ll get in there and kick some behinds.

Soon I got word that Hart had won the endorsement of the Arkansas AFL-CIO.

Abramson was paying a price for locking down establishment people. He’d be fine for the working man, but the political dynamic had shoved him over with the money bags.

There is this emerging war regarding these elected Supreme Court positions.

Chamber of commerce types abhor that the court, relying on the plain description of powers of the state Constitution, has reined in conservative legislative efforts to cap jury awards for damages—tort reform, they call it.

So chamber of commerce types intend to try to do two things—amend the Constitution and elect pro-business judges.

Abramson had gotten on the business side of that dynamic by starting early and locking down establishment support. But I’d heard him talk about how gratifying his recent work had been, bringing justice to some disadvantaged and mistreated guy, as a governor’s appointee to the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

In the meantime, Abramson, a yellow-dog Democrat close to Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton, had Republican consultants. They were telling him that, due to the nonpartisan nature of a Supreme Court race and the ever-reddening of Arkansas, he needed to line up endorsements from prominent GOPers.

That’s how you came to pick up the phone last weekend and hear Asa Hutchinson telling you Raymond Abramson was a swell guy. Why, they’d known each other for hours.

Jo Hart beat Raymond Abramson 65 percent to 35 percent.

I say this not because a worthy friend of mine got drubbed. And I say it with all hope and optimism that Jo Hart will be a fine justice.

I say it because all this moneyraising and television advertising and endorsement-chasing and Republican-ingratiating and businessversus-labor arguing is no way to select an eminent dispenser of actual blind justice.

Hart got to run as “judge” because she got elected to the same appeals court to which Abramson got appointed by the governor. And the canons of ethics prevent or discourage judicial candidates from actually discussing . . . you know, issues.

So let me leave you with a little outline of my own adaptation of what they call the Missouri Plan.

Let’s say the Arkansas Bar Association put forth three professionally respected nominees for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Let’s say the governor picked one of those. Let’s say the Senate Judiciary Committee held confirmation hearings and that the full Senate confirmed. Then let’s say the seated justice, if wanting to remain on the court after, say, six years, would stand alone on the ballot for voter ratification up or down.

I’m not saying the people can’t make the right choice. I’m saying they don’t get the chance to make a genuinely informed decision through these prevailing trivialities.

I trust the people fully to decide if a judge ought to stay, and I want to preserve for them that ultimate power.

P.S.—Indulge me in a moment of consolation for my pal Raymond Abramson. In Monroe County, where they know him and his family from a lifetime, he got 1,311 votes and she got 266.

—–––––

John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.

Editorial, Pages 77 on 05/27/2012

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