Brian Dickerson of the Free Press, in a column published on Monday, reported on the order of the Michigan Supreme Court denying Geoffrey Fieger's motion to recuse five of its seven Justices (all but the "liberals", Kelly and Cavanagh) on the ground of bias against him. Fieger, whose $21.9 million verdict in a sexual discrimination case against DaimlerChrysler is now on appeal, had cited the campaign literature used by three of the Justices (Taylor, Markman, and Young) in the 2000 as evidence in support of his claim. That campaign literature prominently featured Fieger as an exemplar of the system gone awry, which they promised to correct, but of course Fieger has only his own ego to thank for putting himself in the middle of the bullseye.
Dickerson notes that Justice Betty Weaver, regarded as the most moderate of the five conservative Justices, included comments in her concurring opinion calling for some reform of the judicial election system that has gotten out of hand in this state. The primary thrust of her comments is, of course, the fact that the 2000 Supreme Court election, in which the camps which oppose the conservative Justices (the Democratic Party, labor unions, and the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association) mounted an aggressive and well-funded but ultimately unsuccessful effort to unseat Taylor, Markman, and Young. The total amount spent by both sides in this hard-fought contest was $16 million, which Weaver characterized as "unseemly, wasteful and ultimately damaging to the public's trust and confidence". (We will post a link to this order as soon as it becomes available on the net.)
As we have noted earlier at this site, however, Michigan is not the only battlefield. The role of money in judicial politics in Texas has generated, well, a scandal the size of Texas, and both Ohio and Illinois saw their own draining battles in 2002. We are by no means alone, but our storms of rage may have come and gone. Both Weaver and, again, Young were re-elected in 2002 virtually without opposition.
11:40:40 PM 
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