In news that has been rattling around for a week, SCOTUS refused to hear a GOP appeal from Pennsylvania lawmakers regarding a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that Pennsylvania districts have been gerrymandered and must be redrawn immediately. Their response?
Talk about impeaching the judges. Paste Magazine reports:
Pennsylvania Senate President pro tempore and Republican Joseph Scarnati told the state supreme court on January 31 that he would openly defy the court’s recent ruling on gerrymandering.
A letter from Scarnati’s legal counsel states that Scarnati will not be complying with the court order. The statement reads, “Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the Court’s Orders.” Scarnati’s previously said that his defiance was due to his belief that the court’s January 22 order “violates the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.”
Yesterday, pollster Matt McDermott tweeted a screenshot of an email from Pennsylvania Republican Cris Dush that was sent to all Pennsylvania House members. In the email, Dush calls for the impeachment of the state supreme court members that found the state’s congressional map unconstitutional.
The email reads:
The five justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plain language of the Pennsylvania Constitution, engaged in misbehavior in office. Wherefore, each is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and disqualification to hold any office or trust or profit under this Commonwealth. I would ask you to please join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.
Does the legislature have the right of interpretation of the law? No, by design the judiciary has that right and responsibility. Impeachment is typically for bad behavior.
How this turns out for both the judges and, later, the GOP should be quite interesting.
But more interesting is that, according to Carolyn Fiddler on The Daily Kos,
Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania are partisan … Subsequent elections for these justices will be “retention” (yes-no) elections, which incumbents very rarely lose, so open seats present the only real opportunity for either party to gain seats.
So rather than select hopefully non-partisan judges who take their responsibilities seriously and needn’t worry about their job security so long as they act like adults, we have judges who are keenly aware that an unpopular judgment could end their careers. I don’t say a bad judgment, but an unpopular judgment. Just let biased “media” who would prefer some other, more malleable creature in the seat, and a PA Supreme Court judge may find themselves the target of a hate campaign.
I’ve discussed the election of judges before, starting here, or just run a search on “Yulee” to find more discussion. I’ve come down on appointed for either lifetime or for an unmodifiable period of time; the practice of selecting judges through voting seems like madness in a system which requires some form of disinterested law interpretation.
