Plus: A call for racial diversity from North Carolina justice is met with an ethics investigation
[link removed]
Battle over Alaska Federal Judge Selection Process Keeps Seat Open
A vacancy
[link removed]
on Alaska’s three-seat federal district court that has been open since 2021 has yet to be filled due to a disagreement over selection strategies between Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. Sullivan wants to use a newly created Alaska Federal Judiciary Council
[link removed]
to pick judicial applicants, a departure from the traditional process that Murkowski used, which relied on help from the Alaska Bar Association to nominate and select candidates.
Alaska Public Media reports
[link removed]
that Sullivan’s new council is the result of a conservative push to remove the bar association from the candidate selection process. In a recent statement
[link removed]
, Murkowski said, “I agree with Senator Sullivan that we can improve our federal judicial selection process, but those conversations should have started a long time ago, not after we’ve spent almost two years working to fill the seat.”
In a departure from the traditional, nonpolitical candidates that Murkowski suggested, the Alaska Federal Judiciary Council has included
[link removed]
politicians among its recommended candidates. Even though Murkowski says she welcomes reforms to the judicial selection processes, she has stressed
[link removed]
that it should come from a place of furthering nonpartisanship, and not promoting a political agenda.
North Carolina Justice’s Calls for Racial Diversity Met with Ethics Investigation
North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls is pushing back against an investigation
[link removed]
into her comments about the importance of judicial diversity. The North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission opened the investigation in response to an anonymous complaint after Earls advocated for greater diversity among judges and lawyers arguing before the court and commented on the racial disparities and implicit bias that she has witnessed as the state’s only Black female justice.
Earls filed a federal lawsuit against the commission alleging that the investigation is aimed at suppressing her First Amendment rights. Her lawyers claim
[link removed]
her political opponents are using the ethics probe to silence one of the court’s most outspoken members. In a recent decision in which the state supreme court overturned recent precedent, Earls wrote, “Let there be no illusions about what motivates the majority’s decision to rewrite this court’s precedent. For at stake in this case is the majority’s own political agenda.” The Brennan Center joined an amicus brief in the case emphasizing the importance of diversity to an effective judiciary.
Alarmingly, what’s happening in North Carolina is not an isolated incident. Judicial standards commissions in states across the country are being used as political weapons to silence and target judges, according to a Brennan Center analysis
[link removed]
. Some of the commissions’ actions appear to be less about judicial ethics and more about potentially removing specific judges from the bench.
The Push to Rein In Judge Shopping Reaches Federal Judicial Policymakers
Advocacy groups and other concerned parties are asking the federal judiciary to take steps to limit the tactic of “judge shopping” in order to protect the impartiality and public legitimacy of the federal judiciary. Judge shopping refers to when parties essentially choose the judge who hears their case by filing the case in a place where that judge is the only judge, or one of only a few judges, who could potentially be assigned. The tactic has drawn attention as conservative activists and others in Texas have increasingly filed lawsuits in single-judge divisions to challenge certain government policies, often seeking a nationwide effect.
Divisions within federal judicial districts were established
[link removed]
by Congress to ensure that there was a “local interest in having local disputes resolved by local judges,” as explained by Northern District of Texas U.S. Chief District Judge David Godbey, who sits on the Federal Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. There is also a statute that gives chief district court judges the primary authority to divide up cases among the judges within their districts. But in smaller divisions where only one or a small handful of judges are available to be assigned, this can mean that parties effectively choose their judges — with an eye toward achieving more favorable outcomes. For example, according to the Department of Justice, the Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has sued
[link removed]
the federal government over 30 times in such divisions.
A letter
[link removed]
filed by the Brennan Center and University of Pennsylvania law professor Amanda Shanor proposed a possible solution: creating a rule ensuring that cases seeking a ruling that would bind people outside the judicial district be randomly assigned within the district regardless of the part of the district where the case was filed. In asking the Judicial Conference to consider the issue, the proposal emphasized that “adopting such a change through rulemaking would permit thoughtful consideration of the different values and institutional needs implicated by judicial case assignment procedures.” In July, a group of 19 Senate Democrats asked the policymaking body to act. The American Bar Association also expressed the view that action is needed. In mid-October, the Judicial Conference committee voted to move forward in studying the issue.
[link removed]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271
646-292-8310
tel:646-292-8310
[email protected]
mailto:
[email protected]
Support Brennan Center
[link removed]
Want to change how you receive these emails or unsubscribe? Click here
[link removed]
to update your preferences.
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
