By Stephen Anderson

Editor

Seemingly unseemly

The Illinois Senate vote, on Law Day, that defeated a proposal for recall of elected officials was probably doomed from the start. Even though it lacked the support of the House speaker and Senate president, the tally was precipitously close to enactment.

HJRCA 28 needed 36 “yes” votes, but received just 33 in a hastily concluded legislative session. There were only 19 “no” votes because two senators voted “present” and five others didn’t even bother to register their sentiments.

Last August, when the constitutional proposal was introduced in the House, the obvious intent was to provide an opportunity for the state electorate to give the heave-ho - to a governor, for instance - for malfeasance, misfeasance or just plain arrogant aggrandizement.

Not to show specific disfavor with “an executive branch officer,” however, the Suffrage and Elections clause amendment included members of the General Assembly “or a supreme, appellate, or circuit judge” as subject to recall.

In his valedictory remarks as president of the Illinois Judges Association on May 30, Mark Schuering thanked the ISBA and CBA for opposing the bill and for attempting to expunge the judiciary from its language.

As the bar associations pointed out, judges already are subject to discipline and removal for misconduct. The Judicial Inquiry Board has filed 80 complaints, resulting in six removals and 16 suspensions. A dozen others were dropped when judges resigned or lost retention bids.

Further, a judge (after six years) or a justice (after 10 years) must face retention by 60 percent of the voters. Although most have been successful, some have not.

The recall of judges is “bad policy” and “a direct attack on judicial independence,” the bar associations charged. “Creating a procedure to allow special-interest groups or unhappy litigants to punish a judge for a tough decision may very well intimidate judges from doing the right thing that the law requires,” the joint statement suggested.

The threat has passed, at least for this election cycle. The putative target, Executive Branch Officer A, may not be recalled – and could even be re-elected. In grumblings from legislators, fed up with special sessions in budgetary impasses, Rich Miller of Capitol Fax (June 2) hears whispers of impeachment.

But that would call for 60 House votes and 36 Senate votes, and perhaps require a fair amount of unified courage in those dissident chambers. Don’t hold your breath.

As Thomas Jefferson advised his children in a list of canons for conduct in life, “How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”

A few words about fewer words

There is an adage about words that goes like this: “The written word is one’s master; the spoken word is one’s equal; the unspoken word is one’s servant.”

Nothing is mentioned about the misspoken word, although we’ve heard about a lot of it lately. She misspoke. He misspoke. They misspoke (the two clamoring clerics). Even “it” misspoke (media punditry, eager to fan embers into conflagrations that produce heat but little light).

In the main, the contentious presidential campaign, too often, has become mired in accusations and recriminations. The occasional issue that bubbles to the surface would  require cooperation with legislators, sovereigns and despots over whom no president has persuasive powers.

But what of the prerogatives in which a president does have dominion? Though many of the Democratic banner-wavers are lawyers, not a word has been heard on the subject of appointing justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The court is where law will be written on real public concerns, such as rights to life and against death.

The Republican candidate, however, on May 6 discussed the future of the judiciary with references to opinions that he considers part of the “common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power.”

Legal affairs writer Jeffrey Toobin, in the May 26 issue of The New Yorker, identified the cases from which the candidate’s contexts were drawn and concludes that, if elected, he will nominate justices who agree with him.

And why not? A president can do that, and will, as we have seen in recent years.

In Toobin’s view, an “unmistakable truth” taken from the speech is “that the stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.”

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Republican candidate’s apparent intent, at least he’s talking about a significant domestic issue. One can infer that his spoken words are his equal.