The raging spectacle that the Arkansas Supreme Court currently makes of itself is mostly a matter of petty personality conflict, raw political calculation and then an important thing.
The credibility and integrity of justice, specifically the issue of justice seeming not blind as it ought, but unnecessarily delayed as it shouldn't--that's the other thing.
Part of the issue seems to be that the seven justices of our state Supreme Court don't get along.
One thing I can tell you is that when Associate Justice Jo Hart formerly sat on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, she couldn't get along with all her colleagues there either.
I can tell you that Chief Justice Jim Hannah and Associate Justice Paul Danielson are the most senior and traditionalist of the seven justices and the two most personally alienated from the more shoulder-chipped style of Justice Hart.
I can tell you that Justice Courtney Goodson has plenty of personality and is a quite competent judge, but is utterly ambitious politically with her eyes on chief justice upon Hannah's retirement. She possesses the people skills to have coalesced the four women on the court--Hart, Karen Baker, Rhonda Wood and herself--into a clique alienated from Hannah and Danielson.
All I can tell you about Wood is that she is friendly on Twitter. I don't know Baker.
That leaves the seventh justice, the third male. That's Robin Wynne of the Fordyce Wynnes, a Harvard grad. I think he leans in terms of legal philosophy to Hannah and Danielson but is trying to play these two sides against the middle either as peacemaker--in which case he's failed spectacularly--or because he sees an important and beneficial role for himself outside the direct warfare.
The best speculation about what first happened in the now wholly bungled gay-marriage case is that, as the case neared resolution last year, somebody didn't like somebody else's dissenting opinion or concurring one. That perhaps was because some of these personal and political issues were revealed in it. So this offended justice withheld her own majority opinion, or concurring opinion or dissenting opinion, in order to allow the term to end without a ruling in the case.
That way, you see, the offending justice of the supposedly resented writings--Don Corbin, who was leaving the court at the end of the year--would take with him his never-to-be-released text.
It is possible that someone--Justice Goodson, perhaps, being savvy and none too crazy about having to stake out a judicial position in such a political and cultural minefield while she had a race for chief justice on her mind--didn't so much mind the failure to rule last year. Perhaps that was on account of her sensing additional delaying opportunities by carrying the case past the pending ruling on same-sex marriage from the U.S. Supreme Court, which could render the whole issue moot at the state level.
I don't know that. I only know that, last week, Hannah and Danielson released extraordinary letters accusing the other justices generally of that.
Then the following happened this year: Corbin left the court and was replaced by Wynne. A special justice had been appointed for the same-sex marriage case by then-Gov. Mike Beebe to replace the recusing Cliff Hoofman, and Rhonda Wood got elected to the Hoofman position.
So the women on the court and Wynne got the idea to open an entirely new and purely procedural case on whether that special justice could continue to sit or whether Wood ought to be allowed to inherit the case, perhaps by having the court start over with new briefs and oral arguments.
Chief Hannah and Justice Danielson disqualified from that goofy concoction of a docket item last week. Danielson called it delaying "machinations" and Hannah called it a complication manufactured from "whole cloth."
Both said the special justice was properly appointed to the case, and that, under clearly established procedure, his appointment of course still applied to that specific case at hand.
"Machinations" and "whole cloth" creation to delay the cause of justice, mainly by ignoring the clearly established path to proceed ... well, those aren't exactly trifling allegations among the justices of the state's highest court.
There is a simple but profound and indeed tragic conclusion: The Arkansas Supreme Court has not served justice in this case, but trivialized and perverted it. The court has applied a combination of personal pettiness and political maneuvering more befitting something as low as a legislative body.
So now Gov. Asa Hutchinson is supposed to appoint special justices to replace the recusing Hannah and Danielson in this procedural nonsense, adding to a delay that was unjust already. He also will appoint a third justice for Wood, who recused previously because . . . well, I forget.
So the governor could direct three votes--indirectly--and pretty much dictate personally this little matter of constitutional law and justice. I recommend he speak to son Seth about whom to appoint.
We shouldn't elect these guys. I mean judges generally and this cast of characters specifically.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/12/2015