PRESS RELEASE
Monday, Dec. 3, 2001
Contact: James Bopp, Jr., General Counsel
Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685
jboppjr@bopplaw.com, www.jamesmadisoncenter.org
 

The James Madison Center for Free Speech praised today's decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upholding a Minnesota canon of judicial ethics that forbids candidates for elective judicial office from stating their views on disputed  political or legal issues. According to James Bopp, Jr., General Counsel of the Madison Center, which represented parties who sought Supreme Court review, "We are very pleased that the Supreme Court will review this matter. When a state requires judges to campaign for elective office, the judicial candidates should not be muzzled and ham-strung in expressing their views on issues of public importance. And voters shouldn't  be forced to vote for judicial question marks. Because judges make law though the common law, voters have a right to know something about ideas of the judges they are voting into office."

In the case, Republican Party of Minnesota, et al. v. Kelly et al., No. 01-521, the Supreme Court agreed to answer one of the questions posed by the Republican Party of Minnesota, Gregory Wersal, who campaigned for election as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, and several persons and an organization associated with judicial candidates represented by the Madison Center.

The High Court agreed to answer whether free speech rights are violated by a Minnesota rule that forbids a judicial candidate from "announc[ing] his or her views on disputed legal or political issues" during the course of an election campaign. According to Bopp, "This prevents judicial candidates from saying anything important on any controversial issue. But how are the people going to know whether to vote for a candidate without hearing the candidate's views? The people shouldn't have to decide whether to hire a judge based solely on a resume. They should have the right to listen to what the candidate has to say about things that matter to voters and what views are on such things."

Those who petitioned the Supreme Court do not dispute the need for an impartial judiciary. "We believe that the need to protect the impartiality of the judiciary is fully protected by a separate ethics requirement that forbids judicial candidates from pledging that they will decide any case in a particular way," said Bopp. "But the rule forbidding judicial candidates from simply announcing their views on political or legal issues goes much further effectively reducing election campaigns to recitations of name, rank, and serial number."

The Madison Center's Petition for U.S. Supreme Court review of the Eighth Circuit decision can be viewed on the Center's website:  www.jamesmadisoncenter.org.