Are courts for sale? Study sees influence of judicial campaign ads in criminal appeals
Image from Shutterstock.
Two columnists are blaming Citizens United for the influx of outside money into judicial races and are raising questions about the impact. Their question: Are courts for sale?
Columns in the New York Times and Mother Jones assert that outside money is pouring into judicial elections since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 struck down a ban on corporate campaign spending on independent ads before an election. While spending overall on judicial races dipped in the next election cycle after the ruling, reported outside spending on judicial races rose to a record-high $24.9 million, Mother Jones says.
Judges competing with the outside expenditures have to raise more money to compete, and the money may come from people who will appear before them, raising questions about impartiality, the Times column by Joe Nocera says.
This year, overall spending in judicial races is rising in many of the 38 states that hold judicial elections, according to Bert Brandenburg, the executive director of Justice at Stake. “We are seeing money records broken all over the country,” he told Nocera. “Right now, we are watching big money being spent in Michigan. We are seeing the same thing in Montana and Ohio. There is even money going into a district court race in Missouri. … This is the new normal.”
Both stories cite a study by Emory University law professor Joanna Shepherd and Michael Kang, who looked at attack ads and state supreme court decisions in criminal appeals in more than 3,000 cases in 32 states. (The New York Times covered the report at its Upshot blog in this story last week.) The study had two findings:
• The more TV ads aired during state supreme court judicial elections in a state, the less likely justices are to vote in favor of criminal defendants.
• Justices in states whose bans on corporate and union spending on elections were struck down by Citizens United were less likely to vote in favor of criminal defendants than they were before the decision.
There are two hypotheses,” Shepherd told Nocera. “Either judges are fearful of making rulings that provide fodder for the ads. Or the TV ads are working and helping get certain judges elected.”
“Either way,” she said, “outcomes are changing.”
