There was an interesting Supreme Court ruling yesterday – Caperton vs Massey.
A West Virginia coal company, Massey Energy, suffered a $51 million damage award to a competitor, and appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Judges to that court are elected, and Massey, using various methods of skirting campaign contribution laws, poured $3 million into the campaign of Brent Benjamin, who won the election to the bench. The $3 million equaled 60% of his total campaign costs.
Benjamin then refused to recuse himself, and sat on the Massey case, casting the decisive vote in a 3-2 ruling overturning the $51 million award.
The Supremes ruled that the conflict of interest was so blatant that Judge Benjamin had to recuse himself. They did not, however, lay out any guidelines on what an appropriate threshold is for conflict of interest.
I have never understood the reasoning behind allowing private contributions to judicial campaigns. Doesn’t that invite corruption? Any significant amount of money (say $1,000 or more) can create an apparent conflict.
Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas all voted against the overturning of the verdict for various reasons. But the bottom line is that they do not believe that the apparent conflict had any bearing on the outcome.
That seems absurd, but I need a better word. My Roget’s suggests ridiculous, silly, strange, illogical, meaningless, bizarre, incongruous. I’ll go with the latter two.
P.S. As Ladybug reminds me below, these four judges are ACTIVISTS!!!
Piece of Mindful 
“Activist?”
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I read about that opinion and thought it interesting as well. Will it drive down to all campaigns? If you have a sign on your property for a city commission candidate, she or he has to disclose a conflict of interest if you bring a proposal forward? How could she or he make impartial decisions?
On the campaign trail, it’s an old far left trap question. There are a couple of answers. In Montana law, such campaign contributions are free speech and excluded from the conflict of interest considerations. Also, the contribution or election signs didn’t elect the candidate, that was done by all the voters.
I think the court was wrong in their conclusion, right in their ruling.
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You’re a bit extreme here – even countries that have public campaign financing, like Canada, mandate a certain base level of support in the form of small contributions from a wide swath of the population before that financing kicks in.
Small contributions from a wide base are healthy and good public policy. Large contributions from a few sources are effectively bribes.
And you and I both know that most voters get their information from TV, that political ads are misleading at best, propaganda at worst, and that candidates who don’t advertise on TV lose. Therefore, candidates rely on large contributions from a few donors to lie to us and trick us into supporting them. Once elected, they carry out the will of their financiers.
Elementary.
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I don’t buy the “therefore, candidates rely on large contributions from a few donors to lie to us” as the logical conclusion of your first two statements. Candidates rely on contributions to lie to us? Unless you’re completely cynical and just say, “candidates….lie to us”.
The object of fund raising is to get enough money to pay for the campaign. Once a candidate does that, they might just stop fund raising altogether.
Were the contributions disclosed to the electorate, and did they vote for the guy anyway? I think so. There’s no “lying” there.
I’m not “a bit extreme” either. I’ve heard a county commissioner candidate asked that exact question about a sign. A SIGN! I’ve heard far left candidates whimper about a couple of thousand dollars.
And I’d say candidates can use a lot of smaller contributions to buy TV time to lie to us, just as effectively.
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You’re missing the point entirely – yes, they lie to us, most of them. It’s part of the job – they cannot put together a coalition of divergent interests unless they lie to at least some of them.
What you are missing is the definition of a conflict of interest – it has nothing to do with lying, consciously or not. It has only to do with the maxim that a person cannot serve two masters. If he takes $3 million from one to get the votes of the other, one of the two will be screwed. And usually, it is the money guy who gets his way, as voters are largely uninformed and easily fooled.
On one end you have cynical, on the other naive. The real world is better interpreted from the cynical side than the naive one.
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So how about Montana’s elected judges? Except for the Chief Water Judge and his water masters, I believe all state positions compete on the ballot.
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My point exactly – how can they not have conflicts of interest?
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You’ll likely enjoy this response.
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