Cultivated Compendium

At least $730,000 has been spent on a Montana Supreme Court race, Hungry Horse News reports. More money has been spent on challenger Lawrence VanDyke than incumbent Justice Mike Wheat. Wheat has been labeled as more liberal than VanDyke. Trial lawyers have contributed to Wheat and conservative groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee and Americans for Prosperity-Montana have been contributing to VanDyke.

Wheat blames some of the ads on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, which now allows corporations to directly spend money on political campaigns ads.

New York Law Journal's Mark Hamblett reports that the New York Court of Appeals is going to answer a question posed to it by the Second Circuit: does New York City's law governing debt collection apply to law firms? A federal district court judge held "in 2013 the law does not apply to plaintiff law firms that attempt to collect debts, and violates a provision of the New York City Charter because it purports to grant New York City the authority to grant or withhold licenses to practice law," Hamblett reports.

Mother Jones has a piece asking if Americans can get a fair day in court: "These days, as more candidates for the bench face rough contests—buffeted increasingly by outside money, thanks to the US Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United—state judges around the country often raise six- and seven-figure sums, mount statewide campaigns, and fend off attack ads from groups that don't disclose their donors. This trend has escalated over the last decade and a half as partisan groups realize that donating to judges can get them more influence, for less money, than bankrolling legislative campaigns."

Mother Jones notes that a Emory University study found that justices who received more money from business interests are more likely to vote in favor of businesses appearing before them and that an analysis by left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress suggested that justices would side with prosecutors when more money was spent on ads suggesting they were soft on crime.

Omar G. Encarnación, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues that the recent advance in ensuring same-sex couples can marry in the United States is much more modest progress on LGBT rights than one would think: "the United States lacks not only federal legislation protecting same-sex marriage but also federal laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, better known as ENDA -- a law intended to prevent antigay discrimination in the workplace -- has languished in Congress since it was first introduced in 1974." He notes that conservative parties in countries like Argentina, Chile, France, Portugal, Spain, and Uruguay, have supported same-sex civil unions as an alternative to marriage. Pope Francis supported such a measure when he was archbishop in Buenos Aires, making "the Republican position on gay rights to the right of the pope." The U.S. Constitution also does not lend itself to a "bold court rulings in favor of gay rights," Encarnación argues. "By and large, the U.S. Constitution remains faithful to its eighteenth-century foundations, which includes a very narrow view of social rights."
 

Even though Congress repealed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that banned gay members of the military of serving openly, a ban remains on transgendered people serving in the military, the Washington Post reports: "The ban remains firmly in place, with about two dozen service members known to have been discharged over the past two years, according to advocates." About 15,500 transgender people are serving in the military, the Willliams Institute estimates.

There's been a strange twist in two Montana Supreme Court races, the Independent Record reports: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has accused Stanford University and Darmouth College of "voter manipulation" for their role in a mailer sent regarding the Supreme Court races. The 2014 "Montana General Election Voter Information Guide" rated that four candidates as more liberal and more conservative and was sent by a Stanford research project funded with $250,000 from the Hewlett Foundation and $100,000 from the university, the Independent Record further reports. The project's website says its studying how candidate positioning affects voter turnout in judicial elections when races are nonpartisan. Tester said he has concerns about the universities testing hypotheses on the voting public.

There's been a strange twist in two Montana Supreme Court races, the Independent Record reports: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has accused Stanford University and Darmouth College of "voter manipulation" for their role in a mailer sent regarding the Supreme Court races. The 2014 "Montana General Election Voter Information Guide" rated that four candidates as more liberal and more conservative and was sent by a Stanford research project funded with $250,000 from the Hewlett Foundation and $100,000 from the university, the Independent Record further reports. The project's website says its studying how candidate positioning affects voter turnout in judicial elections when races are nonpartisan. Tester said he has concerns about the universities testing hypotheses on the voting public.

It's been quite a week for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. First, Justice Seamus P. McCaffery resigned from the court after he was suspended by his fellow justices amid allegations that he sent pornographic emails, attempted to fix his wife's traffic ticket, allowed his wife to receive thousands and thousands of dollars in referral fees from law firms and may have "attempted to exert influence" in judicial court appointments in Philadelphia, the Allentown Morning Call reports. Then today Joan Orie Melvin, who was convicted of using the resources of her chambers on her judicial campaigns, has dropped her appeal, the Associated Press reports. The Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld Melvin's conviction and sentence, including the order requiring her to send apology letters to every judge in Pennsylvania. But the Superior Court rejected the part of the order requiring Melvin to write the apologies on copies of a snapshot of her in handcuffs. 

ProPublica's Robert Faturechi reports on how a push by a dark-money group to oust some Kansas judges running for retention has exposed a gap in that state's campaign finance laws. The group Kansans for Justice is encouraging voters to reject the retention of Supreme Court Justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson: "Even though the group has all the hallmarks of a political committee – it is soliciting contributions, plans to send mailers, and has an explicit electoral goal – it's not required to report anything about its leadership, donors or spending," ProPublica reports. Why? Supreme Court justices are not included in Kansas' legal definition of "state officers," so groups trying to influence races involving the justices don't have to make those sort of disclosures, ProPublica further reports.

The National Law Journal's Amanda Bronstad provides an overview of ballot initiatives affecting the courts that voters will be deciding to accept or reject:

In California, voters will decide if the $250,000 statutory cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases should be annually adjusted for inflation. If approved, the cap would be raised to $1.1 million.

In Tennessee and Florida, there are initiatives to change those states' constitutions regarding the selection of judges. In Florida, the governor would be allowed to prospectively fill some judicial vacancies. In Tennessee, the governor would be able to select nominees for the appellate courts.

In Louisiana, there is an initiative that would end the requirement that judges retire at the age of 70.

In Nevada, there is an initiative to establish an intermediate court of appeals.