| The issue of a West Virginia Supreme Court Justice failing to remove himself from big buck coal company cases, after millions of dollars was spent by coal interests to elect him, has garnered nationwide attention, including this Editorial from the NY Times:
The Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in a case that goes to the heart of the nation's justice system and the rule of law: the right to a fair hearing before an impartial judge, untainted by money or special interests.
The case involves a brazen â and so far successful â attempt by the chief executive of a large coal company to overturn a major damage award against his firm. A West Virginia jury decided that the coal company, Massey Energy, had fraudulently driven a small competitor, the Harman Mining Corporation, into bankruptcy proceedings. Massey's chief executive, Don Blankenship, decided to appeal. But before that, he spent an extraordinary $3 million to help elect a member of West Virginia's State Supreme Court, Brent Benjamin.
When Massey's case came before the West Virginia court, Mr. Benjamin declined to do the right thing and recuse himself. "No objective information is advanced to show that this justice has a bias for or against any litigant," he wrote. Mr. Benjamin subsequently cast the deciding vote to toss out the award against Massey.
This case offers the nation's top court the opportunity to make clear that judges who receive outsize campaign contributions have a duty to recuse themselves. Although not all contributions implicate due process, Mr. Blankenship's multimillion-dollar quest to tilt the scales of justice surely does. It is vitally important for the Supreme Court to say so.
Sadly, the West Virginia case, while extreme, points to an alarming trend. It comes at a moment when judicial neutrality â and the appearance of neutrality â basic to due process are under a growing threat from big-money state judicial campaigns and the special-interest contributions that fuel them.
Thirty-nine states elect at least some of their judges. Recent years have seen a proliferation of multimillion-dollar judicial races, replete with nasty attack ads and all of the other accoutrements of sleazy partisan politics. This sort of low politics is bad enough in campaigns for legislatures and statehouses. But it must be kept as far away as possible from the nation's courthouses.
This case has drawn an unusual array of friend-of-court briefs from lawyers, jurists and business groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, the Committee for Economic Development and the Conference of Chief Justices. A wise decision would recognize the threat posed by record-breaking fund-raising for judicial elections â and make clear that judges and justice are not for sale.
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