Elections and Judicial Integrity
Last week, the Sun-Times ran a piece about the new pension-reform law, examining the overlap judicial election campaign contributors and pension-stakeholders, in the context of a potential lawsuit challenging the pension-reform law.
The piece raises some important questions of how judicial campaigns affect the apparent integrity of state Supreme Court Justices. It is not difficult to understand how the public might question the impartiality of a justice, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from organizations with a critical stake in Illinois’ pensions, when that justice is called upon to review legislation that changes how pensions are paid. In particular, the article notes the contributions to supreme court campaigns from unions that strongly opposed the pension-reform law as a source of potential conflict and a source of potential public distrust.
As we often discuss in this blog, public trust is the foundation of a strong judiciary. The circumstances of judicial elections—advertising, fundraising, and involvement of special interest groups—can work to undermine public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of a jurist. We at Chicago Appleseed often advocate for clearer recusal standards and independent oversight to combat the perception of bias created when donors or stakeholders of a donor organization appear an elected judiciary, particularly when the subject of the litigation is itself a hot political topic, like pension reform, tort reform or heath care reform. The Sun-Times, however, looks at another option to combat perceptions of bias: changes to campaign financing.
The article briefly discusses a failed Illinois legislative proposal for campaign contribution limits and a public financing system for judicial elections. Public financing not only levels the playing field amongst candidates by having all candidates tap into the same financing resources, but also removes the questions of impartiality in a judge, which arise from very large campaign contributions. Public financing for political campaigns, generally, is a voluntary program for candidates who agree to limit campaign spending in exchange for public funding for the campaign.
Many public funding systems for campaign financing limit—but do not prohibit—private contributions to campaigns accepting public funding. Furthermore, a study by the Brennan Center and the Campaign Finance Institute suggests that small donor matching funds bring people into the political process who are traditionally less engaged in it and supports the claim that public financing systems improve connections between public officials and their constituents by giving candidates an incentive to connect with a more diverse and broader array of constituents during their campaigns.
The Brennan Center has excellent resources for learning more about public financing, as does the National Center for State Legislatures. The American Bar Association, who supported the 2003 proposal for public financing in Illinois, released an extensive report on public financing specifically for judicial campaigns in 2003.
The nation’s first public financing for judicial elections began in North Carolina in 2002 and survived a court challenge in 2008. However, it was repealed in 2013, despite use by 80% of judicial candidates when it was available, and despite public support for the program. The loss of this program is a blow to the judicial campaign reform movement. North Carolina’s program, in addition to being popular with the public and widely-used by candidates, was considered self-sustaining and succeeded in reducing conflicts with special interests in judicial campaigns.
There is strong public interest in an impartial judiciary. This will require campaign finance reforms, like the failed proposal in Illinois and the successful—but dismantled—public finance program in North Carolina.