Gerrymandering the courts

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Republicans in North Carolina are trying to make NC a one-party state, and the courts are telling them No Can Do, so now they’re trying to make the courts one-party.

Courts have overturned 14 laws passed by the legislature since 2011, including redistricting maps for the House of Representatives and the state legislature that one federal court called “among the largest racial gerrymanders ever encountered by a federal court.” Sweeping voting restrictions passed by the legislature in 2013 suffered a similar fate, with a federal appeals court saying they targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The legislature’s Republican supermajority hasn’t fared any better in state courts, which have blocked GOP efforts to strip teachers of tenure and to prevent the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, from appointing a majority of commissioners on state and local boards of elections.

Now the legislature has embarked on an unprecedented plan to transform the state’s courts by gerrymandering judicial maps to elect more Republican judges, preventing Cooper from making key judicial appointments, and seeking to get rid of judicial elections altogether. Cooper calls it an attempt to “rig the system.”

Probably because that’s clearly what it is.

Now the legislature is taking up a host of controversial new proposals in a special session, including redrawing judicial maps for the first time in roughly 50 years to put more Republicans on the bench. The new maps would likely give Republican judges 70 percent of seats on North Carolina’s superior and district courts, according to an analysis by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a voting rights group based in Durham. The group calls the new lines “a gross political gerrymander of our state’s legal system, designed to ensure that Republican judges will be elected in a disproportionate number of districts statewide.”

Not good.

Comments

3 responses to “Gerrymandering the courts”

  1. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    Shit, I’m glad I live in a country with a largely apolitical judiciary where judges are not electable.

  2. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    I’m not sure it would be such a bad deal to get rid of elected judges, but the partisan appointments are also a problem. Maybe judges should be selected by a bipartisan group made up of practicing attorneys, but with a heavy control on it so the attorneys can’t be in a position to get special favors in return for putting the judges on the bench.

    Damn, it’s so hard to find a system that can’t be gamed, isn’t it?

  3. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    All systems can be gamed somehow. Ours is actually pretty loose (see below), but so far our parliamentary democracy is functioning ok – possibly helped by MMP, which is opposed only by socially conservative authoritarians.

    From our Courts website (emphasis mine):

    Judicial appointments are made by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Attorney-General.

    For appointments to the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court, the Governor-General is advised by the Attorney-General who, by convention, receives advice from the Chief Justice and the Solicitor-General. For appointments to the District Court, the Governor-General is advised by the Attorney-General who receives advice from the Chief District Court Judge and the Secretary for Justice.

    Although judicial appointments are made by the Executive, it is a strong constitutional convention in New Zealand that, in deciding who is to be appointed, the Attorney-General acts independently of party political considerations. Judges are appointed according to their qualifications, personal qualities, and relevant experience.

    Successive Attorneys-General have announced new systems designed to widen the search for potential candidates and increase the opportunity for input. Within the past 10 years the systems adopted by Attorneys-General have resulted in a more diversified judiciary. Judges have been appointed whose career paths have not been those of the conventional court advocate.

    The convention is that the Attorney-General mentions appointments at Cabinet after they have been determined. The appointments are not discussed or approved by Cabinet. The appointment process followed by the Attorney-General is not prescribed by any statute or regulation. From time to time it has been suggested that a more formal method for appointment of judges should be adopted but that course has not been followed. There is no suggestion that the present procedure has not served the country well.

    All superior court judges (Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court) are High Court judges. Section 94 of the Senior Courts Act 2016 provides that no person shall be appointed a judge unless he or she has had a practising certificate as a barrister or solicitor for at least seven years. This is the bare minimum for appointment as a High Court judge. Judges also require much more than just experience in practice. They must be of good character, have a sound knowledge of the law and of its practice, and have a real sense of what justice means and requires in present-day New Zealand. They must have the discipline, capacity and insight to act impartially, independently and fairly.

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