Hearsay

Nothing might give Russell Nigro more solace than being ordained as the poster guy du jour for judicial selection. He was just voted off the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after a decade of competent, uncontroversial service.

In fact, Nigro holds the dishonor of being the first justice to lose a retention election in the 218-year history of the Keystone State, the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

Without due process, he was convicted in the court of public perfidy for the victimless crime of receiving a pay raise. State legislators enacted a salary boost for themselves in July, and it accrued by law to members of the judiciary as well.

Money was behind Nigro's ouster, maybe more than the $400,000 he raised in his failed retention bid. Three groups of citizen activists prefaced their vows to unseat the entire state legislature next year with a campaign to bounce two supreme court jurists from the bench as a message.

Nigro, a Philadelphia Democrat, lost by two percentage points, while voters retained his Republican colleague, Sandra Schultz Newman. The governor, a Democrat, will nominate a replacement next month.

“There's not been one single article that's said I'm incompetent, lazy, intemperate, crooked or biased,” Nigro pleaded in his defense. “Nobody's said any of those things because it wouldn't be true. I'm fair, I'm honest and I have a good temperament.”

But those traits, although meritorious, didn't carry the day against the misdirected onslaught of outrage fomented by myopic vigilantes. The court should have overturned the pay raises, they said without offering a constitutional basis for review.

The elusive truth is that no retention of a sitting jurist is secure in an elective system, nor is the quality of the judiciary assured of enhancement in a political election.

Money speaks, and the most money speaks the loudest. Early reports from Southern Illinois indicate that fund raising could bear influentially on the outcomes of 5th District Appellate and Circuit Court elections in 2006.

The battle for bucks between the trial lawyers and the medico-business reformers resembles a replay of the enmity of the 2004 Supreme Court contest, but likely on a smaller scale than $9 million.

In Cook County, the Chicago Federation of Labor has put judicial candidates on notice that it intends to evaluate and endorse before the March primary. There would be nothing wrong with that except the criteria may not necessarily be competence and integrity alone.

A CFL official told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that “This process is being put in place so that labor can have a voice in the selection of judges in the elective process.” Specifically, judges who “are making decisions on working men and women's lives every day.”

Actually, “integrity, temperament, industry and professional competence” are addressed in the CFL judicial questionnaire (you could look it up at www.cflonline.org), but way down at question number 24. Here are some of the questions that precede it:

“Would you support organizing for collective bargaining in any department of the court system, including court reporters?” “Do you feel that judges should have administrative authority to rule on employee issues, including contracts, grievances, the right to organize, etc.?” “How would you describe your judicial philosophy?”

Also on the form is this pertinent non-question: “Describe why you believe you can establish an effective campaign committee to recruit volunteers and raise money for a successful judicial campaign.” There's that M-word again.

The questionnaires are due Jan. 2, after which candidates will be screened by a committee representing the interests of 500,000 organized carpenters, electricians, laborers, teamsters and service employees, the official said.

Again, whether labor finds a judicial candidate either “endorsed” or “not endorsed” is proper in our elective system. What would not be proper is a well-moneyed marketing effort of false characterizations and misconstrued qualifications.

Slating by the Cook County Democratic Party is also fair game in politics, as long as it is taken in context. Fortunately, some well-qualified judicial candidates have gained support from the party, although not entirely because of their superb credentials.

In those instances, one might say that the party's money will be well spent. In other instances, yet to be determined after the filing deadline, perhaps not.

As “Abe Martin,” the alter ego of political lampoonist Kin Hubbard, observed almost a century ago: “When a fellow says it hain't the money but the principle o' the thing, it's th' money.”