judiciary

Florida's 17th judicial circuit wanted to charge $132,000 to search for records pertinent to the Center for Public Integrity 's request to access procedures and policies regarding foreclosure cases. "Charging high fees for access to public information can undermine public records laws and serve as a back-door way for government agencies to avoid releasing information they want kept private," the center notes. The center is seeking reconsideration of the bill, which it says are excessive.

As it becomes increasingly clear that Ukraine is likely to lose its eastern territory, Maria Popova, writing in Foreign Affairs, says that a plan to purge Ukraine's judiciary is going to backfire. The judiciary has severe problems with political subservience and corruption, she says. But cleaning up the judiciary through "lustration -- the process of weeding out (and denying future office to) the current judicial leadership" may increase corruption as judges try to protect themselves from being dismissed, Popova says: "The short-term benefits for the government (and for justice) of lustration will become a long-term liability. The thorough purge of the judicial leadership would only remind judges that they can be punished for delivering politically incorrect rulings. Research in Latin American has shown that, when judicial tenure is not guaranteed and each incumbent purges the judiciary after coming to power, judicial independence tends to stay low under democratic and authoritarian governments alike. Lustration could thus harm judicial independence in Ukraine more than it helps."

After Pennsylvania state-court judges lost their challenge in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to the constitutionality of the requirement that they retire in the year that they turn 70, they now have lost in federal court too, The Legal Intelligencer reports. The federal judge rejected both their equal protection and due process claims, citing binding precedent. The judge also rejected arguments that he should apply a higher standard of review than rational basis and that the US Supreme Court's holding in United States v. Windsor rejecting the federal Defense Of Marriage Act provided more support for the judicial plaintiffs' position. There also are bills pending in the General Assembly to put constitutional amendments before voters on either eliminating judicial retirement altogether or to raise the mandatory retirement age to 75.