Three distinct and essential issues arise from this newspaper's admirably reported front-page series the last few days.
The articles have focused on class-action law firms lathering big campaign donations on our Supreme Court justices and winning nearly all their cases during that time before the Supreme Court.
First, the issue is not a quid pro quo--of bribes for rulings or of outright corruption. Instead it is one of an unseemly appearance that befouls our system of criminal justice.
You have a super-rich class-action firm in Texarkana in which John Goodson is a partner. He is the husband of Justice Courtney Goodson, who seeks in the current campaign to become chief justice.
This Goodson firm has allied with out-of-state class-action firms in practices that have succeeded in getting Miller County described in Fortune magazine as a judicial "hell hole."
The charge is that--until the U.S. Supreme Court put the quietus on the process--these firms regularly went together to file class-action suits and, with the seeming acquiescence of the local court, pestered the defendants with so many voluminous pre-trial evidentiary requests that the defendants found it best to settle the cases, merits aside. The further charge is that these settlements demonstrably served the financial interest of these plaintiffs' lawyers, but not so demonstrably served the aggrieved claimants.
Just now the Goodson firm and some of its allied firms have been called before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes in Fort Smith next month. It's to explain themselves on something the judge read in Arkansas Business: The firms' class-action suit in his court got abruptly withdrawn and filed the next day in Polk County Circuit Court, complete at that time with a proposed settlement that already had been negotiated by the parties--and which was perfunctorily approved by the state court that answers to the state Supreme Court of which Goodson's wife is a member who seeks to be chief.
So the leading source of campaign money for our Supreme Court justices in recent years ... well, it turns out from this newspaper's investigation to be those very class-action firms.
Nothing in that scenario assails the personal integrity of any Supreme Court member who might have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Goodson firm and associated firms--donations the justices are prohibited from directly seeking as candidates. Their finance chairmen do that.
The issue is that the appearances reek.
A class-action defendant winding up before the Arkansas Supreme Court has no sound or demonstrated reason to be confident of fairness.
Second, it's obvious from the aforementioned odor that we shouldn't elect Supreme Court justices. Gov. Asa Hutchinson told the state Bar Association precisely that last summer in Hot Springs.
We need a system in which a merit-selection committee offers via a peer-reviewed screening system all certified prospects for gubernatorial nomination for state Senate confirmation. The voters could vote up or down whether to continue these justices past a first term. The justices wouldn't campaign for voter affirmation. They'd merely stand for it.
If we had merit selection already, I'm thinking only two of the current justices--Chief Howard Brill and Associate Paul Danielson--might be on the Supreme Court. And both will be gone next year.
This rule by which Supreme Court candidates are not to ask for campaign contributions, and by which they say they try not even to know ... that's a charade.
When a Supreme Court candidate finds from his daily schedule that he is to attend a fundraising reception in his behalf at so-and-so's house, he will innately absorb a pretty good indication--from the address of the reception and the faces of the guests whose hands he shakes--which lawyers in town are writing his campaign $250 checks ... and, by the way, who in town isn't.
Third, the issue is that, while we shouldn't elect justices at all, we should not forget that we have that unfortunate responsibility now, and that, on March 1, we ought to vote against Goodson's wife, Courtney, to be chief justice.
It's not that she's corrupt or incompetent. It's that the prevailing odor gets worse if she is chief.
And it's that she happens to have drawn opposition from a longtime circuit judge in Mountain View named Dan Kemp whose honor and decency are unassailable in the consistent views of those who have long known him or practiced in his court.
I have liberal acquaintances berating me for talking up the conservative Kemp over Goodson, who, they think, is more likely to champion the people against corporations.
But I am less interested in the substance of a ruling than in the integrity or appearance thereof in that ruling.
Give me a reasoned ruling I disagree with from a demonstrably fair court that all parties have no good reason to distrust.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/26/2016