Janus Capital Chairman Emeritus Landon Rowland is worried about the corrupting influence of money in politics. This is not so unusual, except for two factors. Rowland is a mild midwestern businessman, the type of sober fair minded moderate who doesn't express concern lightly. And Rowland's concern isn't bought politicians, but bought judges. Rowland believes that corruption in our courts, as usual spearheaded by money in elections, is slowly wrecking our economy. What makes America a great place to do business is the certainty provided by a world class court system that makes sure the rules of the road apply to everyone equally. This, he believes, is now in jeopardy.
I've written before about the unholy alliance of business and state that sells our elections and our legislative process to the highest bidder. That same unholy alliance is corrupting our courts through a deep and effective campaign to buy off judges the way that our politicians have been purchased. Rowland pointed this out in a 2009 op-ed opposing a significant change in the way that Missouri judges are chosen. Currently, the state has a nonpartisan commission of experts that screen judicial candidates, and then the governor picks among them. The electorate gets to vote judges out of office through "retention elections". This protects the independence of the judiciary, and ensures that judges don't have to go begging to corporate interests for campaign solicitations. This "Missouri Plan" was implemented to ward off machine corruption in the 1940s, and is so successful that it is in use by 24 states.
A system like this works because it creates visibility, integrity, choice, and aligned interest. Experts credential candidates, elected public servants choose from among those candidates, and voters get a veto of those candidates through elections. The interests of all parties is aligned as there is legal integrity with a democratic check, and the visibility provided by an electoral campaign. Yet, judges, though elected, are not reduced to begging for campaign cash from people over whom they might have power. It's not a perfect system, but it provides a basic modicum of justice through a mix of professional norms, transparency, and elections.
So of course, corporate backed groups are now trying to end this "Missouri Plan" in favor of straight up judicial elections. And this is where the perversion of campaign finance corruption comes in - when money equals speech, elections become auctions. In the past ten years, the amount of money in judicial elections has doubled. Just ten organizations spent 40% of all money on state high court elections. Last year, the Supreme Court legalized unlimited amounts of corporate and labor cash in elections through its Citizens United, and now the amount of secret money flooding into these elections will skyrocket. This aligns the interests of judges not with citizens, or legal experts, but with those who can pay. Justice is now an auction, and the goal of the vampire industry who control vast sums of capital is to make sure the scales of justice weigh nothing but gold.
Consider the key case cited by most experts in West Virginia showing the cost of judicial corruption. Rowland notes:
The CEO of A.T. Massey Coal Co. spent $3 million to elect lawyer Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court, while Massey Coal was appealing a $50 million jury award against it. Even after repeated requests from the petitioners, Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself, instead casting the deciding vote to overturn the $50 million judgment.
This is simply bought justice. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in a narrow 5-4 decision, arguing that Benjamin's refusal to recuse himself violated due process. That's how bad it is, where the election of judges with corporate money is itself a named factor by the Supreme Court in biasing judicial outcomes. And this case took place before Citizens United.
The attack though isn't simply at the state level. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife took $680,000 in payments from a corporate funded think tank. Thomas didn't disclose this money as family income, as the law required. Thomas was of course a vote for Massey coal. These kinds of what-look-like-bribes are become more and more routine. "Judicial junkets" are now all too common; during these junkets, judges are now given lavish corporate vacations under the guise of education, and even have investments in industries with significant decisions pending before their courts. Talk about misaligned incentives.
And in our regulatory agencies, the courts are being corrupted as well. One judge for the Commodities Future Trading Commission promised the person who appointed him that he would "never rule in favor of a complainant." And the person who appointed him? Wendy Gramm, the wife of deregulatory king and former Senator Phil Gramm. And indeed, he has never ruled for an investor. This does not inspire faith in our business environment.
Massive election spending, junkets, overt payments while in office to family members, conflicts of interest and pre-appointment deals -- this are the kinds of tactics that have bought our Congress and separated us from our government. That this is taking place in our courts is not surprising. The same forces are buying our courts that are buying our politicians. That want to lock us in a national prison of injustice, and call it a democracy. They look at an auction, and call it an election. Visibility, integrity, choice, and aligned interest, four elements I use to test the resilience of a political system -- they are all increasingly missing from our corporate funded courts.
Historians refer to the late 19th century, during the first robber baron era, as the state of courts and parties. It was a brutally partisan era, with frequent violence at the polls, the murder of union organizers by corporate backed security forces, and child labor. The courts were forums of power, not justice. Political machines, corrupt puppets of railroads and racists, dominated courthouses and used them to control elections and the business life of the nation. American capital markets were incredibly corrupt, with frequent market rigging and booms and busts caused by rampant use of insider information. This is where we are heading with unlimited corporate cash flowing into the court system.
There is currently a large debate over the question of whether the 99% are served by this system, or whether the 1% have rigged it in their favor. The people in the streets at Occupy Wall Street feel a deep injustice over this system, but mostly they focus on Congress or politicians. They believe that our political institutions lack integrity. Our courts have as of yet been exempt from this level of scrutiny, but what we're seeing with this corporate attack on judicial integrity is that a lack of aligned interests, secrecy, and corruption are eroding faith here as well. The secrecy, the money, the lack of visibility over how judges are chosen, the lack of aligned interests -- it's all a part of undermining justice. Every court in the country has justice as its putative goal, every judge in the land should see these people as aligned with their job. Many judges do see their job as one of protecting and preserving justice in America. But increasingly, the incentives in the system cut against such a noble attitude. As we expose the forces trying to turn our courts into a forum for bought justice, we will eventually help everyone understand what Landon Rowland does -- justice corrupted by money is justice denied.
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This 'judge' was sending kids to a PRIVATE reform school [jail] and getting paid per head.....this is yet another reason why privatization is a very, very bad idea!
These cries of woe humor me. It is like the people of the middle east asking for protection in their revolutions. Americans effected change in 1776 with their blood to have the right to vote. Now people complain about the people they do or don't elect.
Campaign for who you support. 99% of elections could be won with citizen involvement, regardless of the opposing candidates war chest.
Get real people.
The West Virginia debacle concerning the CEO of Massey Coal is shameful, and for Clarence Thomas to sit on the SCOTUS while his wife is a political activist reduces him from a bought-judge to a manipulated puppet.
An intelligent child can see that the government is our only defense against rapacioua corporations, which are now wealthier than all but the largest countries on the planet. If you weaken the government, the corporations will eat you alive.
Unfortunately, Republicans are neither inteligent nor children. Along about the 1980s, they got it in mind that government was the problem--and once a Repub gets an idea in his head, it's stuck there forever. Starting with Ronald "Death Squad" Reagan, the Right systematically weakened the government vis-a-vis the corporations. The corporations, of course, didn't miss a beat, and quickly took over our government. Life in the U.S. A. has been getting steadily worse ever since, except for a nice island of peace and prosperity, brought to you by Bill Clinton and the Democrats.
This is our situation, brought about entirely by the anti-government policies of the political right. The Obamacrats, being farther to the right than the Republicans, are less than useless.
Do you hear what you are saying when you say the pledge? I pledge to a FLAG. That's right a FLAG. We don't pledge to goodness or righteousness for all. Nope we pledge to a piece of material.
Never again.
(PS....I'm not real happy about Thomas' failure to ID the income)
Does not identifiable infringement of those terms specified in the pledge of allegiance (indivisible, with liberty and justice for all), constitute grounds for the impeachment of any President who subsequently disavows them?
Or is that oath itself, now no more than political oratory?
Well, after years of litigation by Alaskan fishermen, the Supreme Court took the case to review a $5 billion award the trial court had assessed in punitive damages. A 5 to 3 decision lowered the sum to $507.5 million which is less than what Exxon made in interest by delaying the case for twenty years. Moreover, the drunken Exxon captain's oil tanker calamity raised the price of gasoline at the pump for awhile. Exxon actually made a profit despite its discharge of 50 million gallons.
The unelected, life-tenured corporate court was just getting started and every year they tighten the noose of corporatism around the American people.
At the time, I wondered how the Alaska appellate court -- a court that sits to reverse errors of law only -- took it upon itself to reverse the jury's verdict based upon the very evidence cited in your commentary.
In our system of justice, juries decide the facts and return verdicts; courts do not. An appellate court's sole legal job is to review the trial judge's conduct at trial at the request of the appellant on appeal to see if the trial judge committed legal error that harmed the appellate's case in the trial court.
As a lawyer of 40 years, the Alaska appellate court's decision revolted me then as it does now. God knows I trust juries over judges every time. My experience teaches me that my fellow citizens who hear and see the evidence live and in living color know far better what the right outcome should be than some appellate court judge. Your comment illustrates the point perfectly. Bravo!
Carl Kirsch
Atlanta, GA
. All growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow. Stiglitz
more: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
In Bush v. Gore (5-4 decision), the Court picked the more corporate president of the United States in 2000, leaving constitutional scholars thunderstruck at this breathtaking seizure of the electoral process, stopping the Florida Supreme Court's ongoing state-wide recount. The five Republican Justices behaved as political hacks conducting a judicial coup d'etat.
But then what do you expect from justices like Thomas and Scalia who participate in a Koch brothers' political retreat or engage in extrajudicial activities that shake the public confidence in the highest court of the land.
Last year came the Citizens United v. FEC case where the Republican majority went out of its way to decide a question that the parties to the appeal never asked. In a predatory "frolic and detour," the 5 justices declared that corporations (including foreign companies) no longer have to obey the prohibitory federal law and their own court's precedents.
Today our Constitution has been changed. Govt. by the people for the people is long gone
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/18-12
I can only hope it is not FUBAR, but I doubt I'll ever see a restoration of the Constitution of the United States to it's fairest state, in my or my children's lifetimes.