The retention campaign for liberal Florida Supreme Court Justices Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente, and Peggy Quince is “outspending the opposition 20-to-1,” fueled by large donations from plaintiff’s injury law firms that practice before the court, such as the law firms of Wayne Hogan, Tom Edwards, and Fred Levin, Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, Grossman Roth, and Pajcic & Pajcic — not to mention defense lawyers. [Orlando Sentinel]
P.S. And from which side do you think the left-leaning Justice at Stake detects a threat to judicial independence? Right. You guessed it. See also ABA Journal [proposals to cut state bar out of judicial nomination process classed among “legislative attacks” on independent judiciary. Meanwhile, no quantity of vitriolic and demagogic attacks on jurists over such decisions as Citizens United or Concepcion ever seem to get classed as menacing judicial independence].
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Not only that, but the Florida Bar itself is also pushing its members to support these justices in their merit retention fight. I didn’t really care about the issue all that much but I’m kind of ticked off that my dues are being used to push a political issue.
Don’t forget history. Frederic Levin (mentioned above) is the guy who, for about $150,000 in campaign contributions, got the Florida legislature to sneak through a bill saying that contributory/comparative negligence is not a defense to Medicaid recovery. That legal change put Florida into the great Tobacco ripoff and yielded millions to Frederic G. Levin. The University of Florida College Of Law is now named after him.
Make your own judgments folks.
[…] “Survey of State Supreme Court Races and Retention Elections” [Carrie Severino, NRO, Ashby Jones/WSJ; earlier on Michigan here and here, on Florida here, here, and here] […]