Do It For Justice Stevens

(Photo Credit: San Francisco Sentinel)

Today U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens retires after sitting on the nation's highest court for 34 years. We should all wear a bow-tie, his trademark look, in his honor. Justice Stevens' words have been in my mind lately as I just returned from a three-day Justice At Stake conference in Washington, D.C. People from around the country had been gathered up by Justice At Stake to improve state-level efforts to keep courts fair, impartial, and insulated from special interest money.

Justice Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion in the Minnesota v. White case, the case that ended up gutting Minnesota's judicial canon of ethics, thus making Minnesota newly vulnerable to highly partisan and expensive judicial election campaigns that have beset other states, especially Wisconsin. Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent:

There is a critical difference between the work of the judge and the work of other public officials. In a democracy, issues of policy are properly decided by majority vote; it is the business of legislators and executives to be popular. But in litigation, issues of law or fact should not be determined by popular vote; it is the business of judges to be indifferent to unpopularity.

This perfectly sums up why we must protect Minnesota's judiciary from partisan, expensive, contested elections. We should remember Justice Stevens' wisdom as JRLC and the Coalition for Impartial Justice work for a merit selection, public evaluation, and retention election system.

Brian Rusche
Executive Director