Judicial Impartiality Research Articles

When Money Doesn’t Matter: Campaign Spending for Minor Statewide Judicial and Executive Offices in North Carolina

This article examines statewide, partisan elections in North Carolina for minor executive offices, appellate judges, and trial court judges from 1988 to 1994. Elections for these offices are unresponsive to expenditures and incumbency because candidates cannot raise sufficient amounts of money to affect the vote. Partisan trends will continue to be the only factor that significantly affects the vote for these offices unless candidates are able to raise millions of dollars like candidates for higher office (U.S. senator and governor). Statewide judicial candidates will continue to be elected without regard to credentials and judicial philosophy, or they will have to engage in the kinds of judicial high finance now apparent in states like Texas. Trial court judges are not important enough to raise such sums, and statewide election for these offices has been maintained for partisan purposes. For appellate court elections, raising large amounts of money brings questions about judicial impartiality.

Notes: Separation of Powers: The Federal Sentencing Commission: Unconstitutional Delegation and Threat to Judicial Impartiality?

Notes: Separation of Powers: The Federal Sentencing Commission: Unconstitutional Delegation and Threat to Judicial Impartiality?

Lower Criminal Courts: The Perils of Procedure

* The author wishes to thank Anthony Chase, a thirdyear student at the Wayne State University Law School, who not only provided valuable assistance and direction in the preparation of this article, but who also has become a close personal friend. I would also like to note that as a compromise between the sometimes competing stylistic goals of clarity and the absence of sexism, I will use the masculine gender for all personal pronouns while recognizing that the feminine gender is equally appropriate. ** Visiting Associate Professor of Law, University of Hawaii Law School, on leave from Wayne State University Law School. B.B.A. 1967, M.B.A. 1968, J.D. 1971, University of Michigan. I American legal theorist William Seagle makes this point quite clearly when he recalls Anatole France's familiar aphorism. The ideal ofjudicial impartiality requires alone that whatever laws are be administered in an impartial manner. It does not require that the laws themselves be impartial. As Anatole France observed, the law with magnificent impartiality forbids the rich and the poor alike to steal a loaf of bread, or to sleep under the bridges. Thus the impartiality of the law simply masks the partiality of the laws, which reflect the configurations of power in the state, or are entirely composed of political ingredients. The impartial administration of an unjust law can no more make it a just law than the efficient enforcement of a bad law can make it a good law. W. Si A;i.E, L-xw: THE SCIENCE OF INEFFICIENCY 14 (1952). Scagle is quick to observe the ironic character of courtroom procedures designed to convey an impression of fairness while the laws administered in those courtrooms clearly favor different social groups and classes and inevitably bear the imprint of the structure of power in societ, . Judicial impartiality achieves a kind of fairness which is obviously untroubled by drastic inequity built into the content of the laws themselves. Citing Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956), the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that state criminal procedure denying benefit of counsel for an indigent's one and only appeal as of right violated the fourteenth amendment, arguing that there can be no equal justic where the kind of an appeal a man enjoys 'depends on the amount of money he has.' Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 355 (19631. Thus by establishing an indigent's right to counsel on appeal, the Court presumably enhanced the impartial administration of justice. consensus of those who write task force reports or otherwise contribute to the legal literature on criminal justice, is that the lower criminal courts in

The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective

The Independent Judiciary in an Interest-Group Perspective

Judges' Nonverbal Behavior in Jury Trials: A Threat to Judicial Impartiality

Judges' Nonverbal Behavior in Jury Trials: A Threat to Judicial Impartiality

SIMULATED JURY DECISIONS: THE INFLUENCE OF JURY-DEFENDANT ATTITUDE SIMILARITY-DISSIMILARITY

Subjects were exposed to a standard videotape account of a crime of negligent automobile homicide. With the criminal evidence held constant, the similarity of the defendant's attitudes to those of simulated jury members was varied. Subjects exposed to a defendant with attitudes dissimilar to their own rated the defendant as more guilty, sentenced him to a greater number of years of imprisonment, recommended lengthier terms of imprisonment prior to parole eligibility, and evaluated him less positively on measures of attraction and other evaluative dimensions, than did subjects exposed to a defendant with attitudes similar to their own. The results are discussed with respect to evaluative response processes and judicial impartiality.

Judicial Conflicts of Interest in Brazilian Law

The notion of judicial conflicts of interests presupposes judicial impartiality. Historically, the concept of a judicial tribunal has implied the interposition of an unbiased third person (or persons) between parties whose interests are in conflict. Concomitantly with the modern state's assumption of a monopoly over the dispensation of justice has come the obligation to guarantee the impartiality of the agents to which it entrusts the task of rendering judicial decisions. Hence, modern states have attempted to perfect techniques for immunizing the judiciary from the coercive influence of the state itself, which plainly constitutes an underlying basis for the principle of the separation of powers. States have also been forced to devise techniques for immunizing the judiciary from personal and private pressures and temptations. The purpose of this essay is to indicate how Brazil has dealt with the problem of insulating its judiciary from influences which tend to detract from its impartiality.

Electoral Corruption and Controverted Elections

Corrupt electoral practices and controverted elections are topics which might normally be expected to go hand in hand, for the latter usually result only from the former. To some extent, the number of controverted elections is a useful criterion by which to measure the prevalence of electoral corruption; but it may be a highly misleading one, as the corruption must be discovered and proved before any election result can be affected. The criterion is therefore trustworthy only in so far as the relevant legislative devices are effective. To the degree that laws providing for the investigation of electoral malpractices are operative, bribery and personation are discouraged; weakness in these laws, on the other hand, will inevitably stimulate unscrupulous candidates and election agents to utilize any opportunities which may be turned to their advantage.No one who has even a nodding acquaintance with the tolerant attitude taken towards political behaviour generally in the years immediately after 1867 will be surprised to hear that for some time after Confederation the whole problem of corrupt practices and controverted elections was handled in a haphazard fashion. The four provinces which came together in 1867 agreed in general terms on a definition of corrupt practice: it included the giving and receiving of bribes, whether of money, employment, or anything else; the real or threatened use of violence; treating; personation; and in some cases payment for the hauling of voters to the polls. They also had similar views as to how action for corrupt practice should be begun (by a simple petition signed by either an elector or candidate), and had adopted somewhat similar ways of trying the actual election cases, though their procedures varied in detail. Thus the Assembly of the province of Canada had a general committee of elections, appointed by the speaker subject to the sanction of the House, which was charged with preparing two panels of chairmen and members from which election committees consisting of a chairman and four members were finally chosen. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick sent controverted elections directly to a select committee. Manitoba and British Columbia, when they entered the federation, used the ordinary judicial system and tried election disputes like other cases. In the provinces where committees of the assembly were used, the procedure was similar to that of a court: the committee members were sworn to uphold justice; witnesses were examined under oath; and the parties concerned were represented by counsel. It is to be feared, however, that judicial impartiality was noticeably absent in the rendering of verdicts.

Legislative Procedure in Two Anglo Saxon Countries

About the time a few years ago that a great outcry went up from members of the house of representatives and the country at large against Cannonism and the autocracy of the speaker of the house of representatives, great was the lamentation of the private member of the house of commons. In the United States representatives complained that they were deprived of all power because of the unlimited power usurped by the speaker. In England the complaint was directed not against the speaker—whose functions are those of a presiding officer, and who exercises them with judicial impartiality—but against the government, as we use that term in England, that is the prime minister and his colleagues of the cabinet. The “private member,” I may explain, is a member who holds no office under the government nor has ever held any. He constitutes the rank and file.

Limitations of Anti-Trust Legislation

I am here to-night in the capacity of a Greek chorus. I am not so antique and I am sure not half so intelligent. The Greek chorus fulfilled its mission of commenting upon that which the chief actors had said, and whether it was the hero or the villain, it commented with breadth of view and judicial impartiality. Therefore being but a chorus and not an actor, I must be brief. There is another reason that requires brevity and also discretion in my few comments. As the chairman has said I professionally represent as its general counsel one of the big interests against which the attorney-general has directed his zealous and skilful activities. I am therefore in the position of defendant in a United States court at Philadelphia when I was district attorney. A strong case had been proved against him on a charge of selling liquor without a federal license, and his attorney, knowing that Judge Butler most despised a perjurer, counseled him not to testify but to keep off the stand. The colored man said, All right. I 'spects I had better remain neutral. There is a third reason why I want. to be brief in my remarks, and that is, as I still account myself of Philadelphia, and as a speaker, a distinguished member of congress, from another state, is to follow me, I would only postpone your pleasure and do him an injustice if I unduly prolonged my remarks, and I would be wanting in courtesy if I encroached upon the time which remains to him before the arrival of the President. I was much impressed with the fact that each of the preceding speakers treated a different phase of the warfare of the government against moder methods of doing business, and that each gave some testimony as to the practical results of his especial line of work. The attorney-general, on the one hand, spoke of the great legal department of the government, spoke, not only for himself in the successful work which he has done as attorney-general, but in a sense for all his predecessors in that high office since the enactment of the Sherman law. And the only tangible result of the enforce(296)

Modern Biology and Psychology

THIS very interesting volume is nearly equally divided between the two subjects indicated by its title. In the earlier chapters we have excellent accounts of the nature of animal life and its relation to the environment; of the processes of life; of reproduction and development; of variation and natural selection; of heredity and the origin of variations; and of organic evolution. The later chapters deal with the senses and sense-organs of animals; the nature of mental processes in man, serving as a basis for our judgment as to the nature and amount of animal intelligence; the mental processes of animals are then very fully and carefully discussed in three long and very suggestive chapters; and this brings us to a final and very metaphysical chapter on mental evolution. It will be impossible here to do more than notice a very few of the interesting subjects which the author discusses with a fullness of knowledge and a judicial impartiality worthy of all praise. Animal Life and Intelligence. By C. Lloyd Morgan, Author of “Animal Biology,” “The Springs of Conduct,” &c. (London: Edward Arnold, 1890–91.)