{"id":3839,"date":"2009-02-19T10:42:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T15:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2009-02-19T10:44:03","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T15:44:03","slug":"ok-judge-you-hit-your-number-or-die-in-this-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/02\/ok-judge-you-hit-your-number-or-die-in-this-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Okay, Judge, You Hit Your Number or Die in This Room*"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Much of the attention following yesterday’s decision in Siefert v. Alexander <\/a>focuses upon the invalidation of prohibitions against judges or judicial candidates belonging to political parties and endorsing partisan candidates for office. That part of Judge Crabb’s decision\u00a0seems to me, given the balance between regulatory interests and the protection of speech\u00a0struck by the United States Supreme Court in Republican Party v. White,<\/a> to be clearly correct.<\/p>\n

And not, in my view, very momentous. Many judges have prejudicial partisan affiliations and, in highly salient elections, it is not hard for the public to discern whether a\u00a0 candidate is a Republican or Democrat.\u00a0 In fact, one could argue that allowing candidates to claim partisan affiliation is a relatively efficient way to provide pertinent information to voters in campaigns where discussion of the issues is difficult and often cramped by legal and customary restrictions.\u00a0 It’s not that we expect judges to rule in whatever way their party wants (although, as Judge Crabb points out, the prior partisan affiliation of federal judges is strongly correlated with voting patterns), but that partisan affiliation may tell us something (admittedly broad and general) about a candidate’s judicial philosophy.<\/p>\n

More significant, it seems to me, is that part of the decision striking down the Code of Judicial Conduct’s prohibition against the personal solicitation of funds by judges and judicial candidates. <\/p>\n

This represents a sea change in the nature of\u00a0judicial campaigns\u00a0and may further dissuade lawyers from running for judge. Judge Crabb at least implicity recognized that — observing that the restriction may have had the “quaint” intent of protecting judges from the indignity of dialing for dollars <\/a>–\u00a0 but found this insufficient to justify the restriction. (Caution<\/strong>: following the link will take you to some rather raw language.)<\/p>\n

But posited state interests in preventing actual or apparent corruption have been far more likely to justify restrictions on campaign conduct, and restrictions on contributions have been far more likely to be sustained.\u00a0 It is not clear to me that prohibiting personal solicitation represents the same type of restriction on communication as a prohibition on identifying one’s partisan affiliation (or, as in White<\/em>, one’s position on certain issues of public interest).\u00a0 Nor am\u00a0I\u00a0sure that it is unreasonable\u00a0for a state to conclude that personal solicitation of funds by a judge or judicial officer represents a substantial risk of actual or apparent corruption that is not presented by solicitation through a judicial committee.<\/p>\n

* An homage to one of the greatest television series of all time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Shark and Shepherd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of the attention following yesterday’s decision in Siefert v. Alexander focuses upon the invalidation of prohibitions against judges or judicial candidates belonging to political parties and endorsing partisan candidates for office. That part of Judge Crabb’s decision\u00a0seems to me, given the balance between regulatory interests and the protection of speech\u00a0struck by the United States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,68,44,22,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-amendment","category-judges-judicial-process","category-political-processes-rhetoric","category-western-district-of-wisconsin","category-courts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}