July 26, 2004

Despite protest, State Bar to study judicial elections

Albright, Starcher both against state bar review

By The Associated Press

Despite concerns raised by two Supreme Court justices, the president of the West Virginia State Bar is proceeding with plans to review the way voters select their judicial branch.

President Charles Love said Sunday the bar's board of governors has agreed to appoint a committee to assess the state's method of partisan elections for magistrates, justices and circuit and family court judges.

Love said the vote on his request for the study was a close one at the board's quarterly weekend meeting in Shepherdstown.

But while the committee has largely been picked, Love said it will not begin its scrutiny until after the general election. The November ballot features magistrates, circuit judges and a Supreme Court seat.

"I'm trying not to politicize this," Love said. "I want these folks to look into this issue and come back with recommendations. I don't want people to say that we're doing this for some motive."

Love has made scrapping partisan judicial elections a major goal since becoming the bar's chief in March.

"There is no legitimate reason for partisan election of judges," Love said in the bar's journal, The West Virginia Lawyer, in June. "Our process can and should be better."

The push prompted Justice Joseph Albright to urge the bar to resist calls for the review.

"At least postpone it; better yet, deep-six it," Albright wrote in a July 15 letter to Love. "If you proceed now, you are embarking on an ill-advised course at a totally inappropriate time. Please reconsider."

Justice Larry Starcher echoed Albright's sentiment in a July 19 letter to Love. Both letters have been obtained by The Associated Press.

"It is a process that has served our state for nearly a century and a half, and it allows for broad-based participatory democracy by the citizens of our state," Starcher wrote of the state's system. "I fail to see the need to fix an unbroken process."

Albright and Starcher both asked Love to include judicial officers on any review committee. Love said the committee instead includes retired justice Tom Miller, now a lawyer in Wheeling, and several former judicial candidates.

The committee also includes John Fisher, dean of West Virginia University's law school, and John Bailey, Love's predecessor as State Bar president. Bailey has similarly advocated an end to partisan judicial elections, and both he and Fisher are on the board of governors.