Vol. 4 No. 3 (March, 1994) pp. 39-40

JUDICIAL REFORM IN THE STATES by Anthony Champagne and Judith Haydel (eds.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993. 206pp. Cloth $38.50. Paper $23.50

Reviewed by Herbert Jacob (Northwestern University)

Originating at a 1988 conference panel, this book brings together accounts of "judicial reform" in three southern states (North Carolina by James Drennan; Louisiana by Judith Haydel and Tom Ferrell; Texas by Anthony Champagne) and four others (Ohio by John Felice, John Kilwein, and Eliot Slotnick; Pennsylvania by Voorhees Dunn; California by John Culver and John Wold, and Washington by David Burke). Reform in this book means alteration of the process by which judges are selected and disciplined.

The essays' underlying theme, as articulated in an introductory chapter by Anthony Champagne and Judith Haydel and several of the chapters is that interest groups and precipitating events play a key role in political struggles over selection procedures. This is scarcely a new thesis and it is not substantially elaborated in this book. Rather, the book's strength lies in the rich detail provided in these accounts and in the documentation of the new role that federal courts are playing in upsetting established selection procedures in response to litigation brought by African-American groups challenging election rules on the basis of the Voting Rights Act.

Voting Rights Act litigation played a key role in all three Southern states. James Drennan's account of its role in North Carolina is particularly interesting as he shows how the litigation has interacted with the changing balance of power between Democrats and Republicans to produce shifting perceptions by each party of the merits of particular selection schemes. The story is repeated in Anthony Champagne's description of Texas judicial elections with the added ingredient of the role of large campaign contributions by lawyer and industry interest groups to Supreme Court candidates who run state-wide in Texas. As Texas has a separate supreme court for criminal cases (the Court of Criminal Appeals), Champagne shows that elections for positions on that court, which has little power over issues that concern these groups, attract much less interest group money and cost less to run. The story is more complicated in Haydel's account of Louisiana, but litigation there also provided the impetus for the relatively minor alterations in judicial elections which occurred.

Scandal has been another precipitant debate over judicial selection and discipline. Both Dunn's chapter on Pennsylvania and Burke's on Washington describe judicial misconduct which attracted widespread attention and efforts to reform the judiciary. However, in neither state did the efforts result in substantial change. The scandals in each state did not tar enough of the court system to undermine legislative and voter acceptance of the status quo.

The chapter on Ohio focuses more than the others on an effort to introduce a "merit" selection system to that state. It failed, according to the authors, because of the vigorous opposition of the Ohio AFL/CIO which framed the issue as an attempt to take away from Ohio citizens the right to vote for important public officials. Culver and Wold's chapter on California document once again recounts election campaigns against California Supreme Court justices which led to the defeat of three incumbents in 1986 including Chief Justice Rose Bird.

JUDICIAL REFORM IN THE STATES is also useful in showing the incredible variety of selection methods which exist in the United States. Each state has its own variant of election or appointment of judges. It is probably more misleading than helpful to categorize them as editors try to do in their introductory chapter (p. 9); indeed, the authors of the Ohio chapter come to a substantially different count (p. 51).

Champagne and Haydel's book makes no brief for "merit" selection. Nor does it advance the analysis of the impact of such a change on judicial performance. Rather it tries to provide explana

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tions of why reform efforts succeed or fail. Unfortunately, that effort is less than completely successful. Although each author places judicial reform politics in the context of other events taking place at the same time, none succeeds in showing what is needed to catapult judicial reform onto the agenda of state political elites and mobilize sufficient interest group and voter support to produce a substantial change. Occasional lapses of judicial ethics, even as serious as those in Pennsylvania and Washington, did not suffice. The threat of federal intervention through Voting Rights Act litigation comes closer, but it plays only to a narrow band of activists and at best produces only incremental change. The descriptions in this volume may provide the materials needed for a better theory of structural change. They are worthy of our attention.