August 2, 2004

Planned State Bar study not a new idea

Talk of end to partisan judicial elections first came up in 1996

By The Associated Press

The president of the West Virginia State Bar threw down the gauntlet the day he took office.

"In my view, it is unseemly for judges to campaign and raise money to run for office," Charles Love III told his colleagues during his acceptance speech at the bar's annual meeting in March.

Love said a major goal of his presidency would be to change the way West Virginia selects its judicial officers, which is by election in which candidates are identified with political parties.

Love followed up on his acceptance speech pledge last month when he convinced the bar's Board of Governors to authorize a study of the state's selection process.

It was a close decision -- Love's measure passed the 27-member board by one vote.

Love's predecessor, John P. Bailey of Wheeling, also advocated an end to partisan elections during his term. Bailey and Love, in turn, both touted a proposed constitutional amendment adopted by the Board of Governors in 1996.

Sought by then-bar president Thomas Flaherty of Charleston, the proposal would have had the governor appoint circuit judges and Supreme Court justices.

Those appointees would face voters only if they wished to serve additional terms, and only then in nonpartisan elections.

Both Bailey and Flaherty have been appointed to the 20-lawyer committee that will take up Love's charge and study judicial selection; Bailey is its chairman.

Love has said the committee will reflect a range of views on the subject, and will not begin its work until after the November election.

Love has also set a goal short of a constitutional amendment.

Both in his acceptance speech and elsewhere, Love has offered nonpartisan judicial elections as a good first step.

"I do not believe there are any sound arguments against nonpartisan election of judges," he said in March.

Though not the wholesale change previously adopted by the Board of Governors, nonpartisan elections already pass constitutional muster.

When the state's court system was revamped in the 1970s, West Virginia's Constitution was amended so that "The Legislature may prescribe by law whether the election of (Supreme Court) justices is to be on a partisan or nonpartisan basis."

Similar language was added regarding circuit judges.

House Speaker Bob Kiss, who recently joined Love's law firm, said he sees no "clear consensus" among lawmakers for changing the selection process.

"I've never even talked to Charlie about it, but it's been an issue over the last several years," said Kiss, D-Raleigh.

"It is being debated and discussed and analyzed in the Legislature, and it's an issue that's not going to go away."

A dozen other states elected judges in partisan elections when the State Bar failed to convince then-Gov. Gaston Caperton to endorse its proposal in 1996.

That number since has fallen to nine, according to the American Judicature Society.

Of those, Ohio has partisan primaries but nonpartisan general elections.

New York elects trial-level judges but selects its top appeals court justices.

In Michigan, its justices are nominated at partisan conventions to win spots on nonpartisan general election ballots.

Another 17 states hold nonpartisan elections for trial-level judges, while 13 host them for their top appeals court.

The rest employ some variation of an appointment process.