In a highly anticipated case involving the intersection of justice, politics and money, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution can require an elected state-court judge to step aside in a particular case based on campaign spending in state judicial races.
In a 5-to-4 decision released on June 8th, the high court found that the circumstances surrounding Justice Brent D. Benjamin of the West Virginia Supreme Court and a lawsuit involving the Massey Energy Company, his major campaign contributor, were so “extreme” that there was no question that Justice Benjamin should have disqualified himself.
Because 39 states have legal systems in which judges are elected, the outcome of the West Virginia case has been eagerly awaited. Kentucky's judges are elected, so this case is relevant to judges in the Bluegrass state.
Justice Benjamin, who is the chief justice on the West Virginia high court, twice joined 3-to-2 majorities to throw out a $50 million verdict against Massey Energy, one of the country’s biggest coal companies. The cases involved a contractual dispute with another coal company, Harman Mining, and its president, Hugh Caperton. Massey’s chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, spent $3 million in the 2004 campaign to elect Justice Benjamin.
Once elected to West Virginia’s Supreme Court, Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself from the appeal of the Massey case. So much for traditional notions of fair and blind justice in a court of law.
All of this sounds like the novel I just read from the local library, "The Appeal" by John Grisham. In the book, Mr. Grisham makes the important point about how the justice system in more than half of the 50 states is increasingly threatened by this kind of big-money, hard-core gutter politics.
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