As a student who is pursuing a degree in political science at Ohio State and has an interest in Ohio politics, I find myself very disgusted with the way in which justices for the Ohio Supreme Court, appeals courts and district judges are selected. They are elected by the general public.
The appropriate way in which one should obtain a judgeship is the way our federal judges are selected. They are nominated and subject to exam — it is a comprehensive and complex process of evaluation and review. This is not the case in Ohio.
After reading a good story by Jon Craig of the Columbus Dispatch on March 4, I felt I had to voice concern of how Ohio’s judges receive their positions. In his story, Craig says in the 2002 election to the Ohio Supreme Court, Evelyn Stratton received $573,394 and Maureen O’Connor received $503,274 from insurance companies and physicians. Of their opponents, Tim Black received $8,425 and Janet Burnside received $1,525 from the same groups of contributors.
You may find this disparity in contributions to be profound and suspicious, but I don’t. I was an employee of one of the statewide political candidates in 2002 and found there are Democratic and Republican forces which fight to elect Ohio Supreme Court justices to further their agendas and will fund them at any cost. This is what makes me sick: Special interest groups can throw money at judges of all levels of Ohio government and win.
Can you imagine if the United States Supreme Court justices were elected? If they were, you’d find vast contributions from both sides of the political arena throwing tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars trying to elect the most Republican or Democratic candidate of their choice. The result would be a completely pathetic and biased Supreme Court.
The most important concept one must realize is when you elect Supreme Court justices, or any other judge for that matter, you may be electing people who are unqualified or less qualified than their opponents. That’s scary when we are talking about judgeships, let alone the state’s highest court.
What we need in Ohio is a system of appointing judges at the appellant and state Supreme Court level, who are submitted to a Senate judicial committee, questioned extensively and voted on by Senate. These judges need to have a history of abiding by Ohio’s constitution, are educationally competent and unbiased. These judges will be unaffected by special interest groups and will render competent opinions without regard to outside force.
Mark J. Wallace senior in political science
