Howard Bashman disagrees with Hugh Hewitt's statement that "candor is the first requirement of successful blogging."  I'm stuck in the middle on this.  As a consitutional officer and appointed Clerk of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, my ability to opine on legal issues is more restricted than, say, Howard's, or Ernie's or Denise's.  Obviously, it may be problematic for me, in my role as a public servant, to use blogspace to engage in a "web duel [that] makes light sabers look tame," as Hugh Hewitt puts it. 

So candor, for a public information blogger, is of a different stripe than a private blogger.  Before I launched this blog in March of this year, I decided that candor in the public context relates to the free and public delivery of legal information, because law is free.  So I have refrained from weighing in on issues like the election of judges, choosing instead to report facts and perspectives related to law, technology and the courts, all of which falls within the scope of my public duties.  Might not help my traffic, but you won't read any savage commentary here.

This is a delicate balance at times, and perhaps exlains the dearth of bloggers in the public judicial sphere.  Check Ernie's excellent outline of law blogs; practitioners, students and librarians aplently, but almost none in the judicial administration category.   

On Monday, US District Court Judge John T. Copenhaver, Jr. dismissed, on Younger abstention grounds, a suit against the WV Supreme Court and two WV trial judges over the handling of asbestos mass litigation procedures in West Virginia.  The case, captioned Norfolk Southern Railway, et al. v. McGraw, et al. (Southern Dist of WV,  No. 2:01-1238), was filed as an "operational challenge" to the constitutionality of the West Virginia Trial Court Rule 26 governing mass litigation, and the WV Supreme Court's administration of those rules.  The railroads had argued that the WV Supreme Court did not provide an adequate opporunity for review of their federal constitutional claims.  Judge Copenhaver rejected this argument, noting that the railroads had failed to present any constitutional claims to the WV Supreme Court for review.

This ruling comes at a time when the US Supreme Court is considering a petition for writ of certiorari that challenges WV Trial Court Rule 26 and its administration.  (Here's a link [pdf] to the petition for certiorari filed by Mobil, et al., from this Court's decision in SER Mobil, et al. v. Gaughn, et al.) Yesterday, Mobil Corp. filed a motion for stay of the current trial schedule, pending the US Supreme Court's decision.  The WV Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the motion for stay.