The
Politicalization of Justice
U.S
federal courts are in crisis, primarily due to overloaded dockets,
escalating judicial vacancies and the refusal of Senate Democrats
to move the confirmation process. Instead, the Democrats seek to
institutionalize ideology as the benchmark and character assassination
as the means to fundamentally alter the constitutional integrity
of "advise and consent."
Remarkably,
there are now still nominees willing to stand for the federal bench.
As we have weekly updated our Confirmation
Watch section with bios of the President Bushs nominees,
absent any consideration of ideology, we have been mightily impressed
with the qualifications of those willing to serve.
That
will diminish dramatically if a forced and lengthy visit to confirmation
limbo, accompanied by tabloid-quality press releases, is to be the
new order of the day. Since politics is paybackand the current
impasse is at least partially based on that truismthe intensifying
vortex is going to suck in a lot more than hapless nominees for
the judiciary.
The
state courts of Alabama are also in crisis, primarily due to insufficient
funds, to the point of a moratorium on jury trials. While money
is the problem, there, too, a dissonant political tonality pervades
the issue.
Faced
with a $2.7 million budget shortfall, Alabama Chief Justice Roy
Moore undertook the radical step of postponing civil jury trials
and limiting the duration of most criminal jury trials to two weeks.
Five hundred thousand dollars in emergency funding, released by
the governor last week, will get jury trials resumed, after considerable
disruption, and then only temporarily.
Democratic
Governor Don Siegelman and Republican Chief Justice Moore are trading
accusations: The courts are mismanaged. The governor promised
enough money, and then reneged. The courts have $112 million in
uncollected fines, fees and forfeitures. The state received $13
million for settling a lawsuit with Shell Oil; the legislature,
with the governors concurrence, used that money to give pay
raises to state employees instead of to aid the courts. Alabama
judges are comparatively well paid, with another raise on the horizon.
The
political ping pong goes on; yin and yang do not align, or whatever
it is they do to make things cool; feng shui has left the courthouse.
Meanwhile,
both accuser and accused are denied the speedy trials and juries
of peers to which they are constitutionally entitled. More lawsuits,
some justified, will result from that, adding to the burden on courts.
Jails are crammed to the rafters because the normal flow of justice
has been stopped. Even when trials resume, in June, they will undoubtedly
be slowed because of layoffs of court employees.
We
dont have a clue who is responsible for this "mell of
a hess," in the vernacular of an Alabama lawyer, but it does
appear that both sides have sought to escalate the conflict politically
rather than solve the problem.
We
do know that the politicalization of justice, by whomever, for whatever
purpose, at whichever level, is one of the gravest dangers to the
delicate balance of government. We are not so naïve as to ignore
that which has existed forever, usually confined to background noise
effects or sufficiently pronounced as to be reasonably controlled.
Contempt
of Congress and Contempt of Court are legal phrases, now applied
to the demonstrative few who openly and blatantly defy authority.
But justice politicized is justice corrupted. When that corruption
breeds citizen contempt too broad to sanction, then consent of the
governed becomes a shaky proposition.
We
are not there and nowhere near it yet. The signs, however, are not
encouraging.
[Posted
May 9, 2002]
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