By Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron
NJ Today
New Jersey State Bar Association President Ralph Lamparello says the war between the governor and Senate Democrats over Supreme Court nominations has to end.
“It’s the feeling of the membership of the Bar Association that judges are afraid to make the hard decisions. They’re making the safe decisions because they don’t want to be criticized,” he said.
Lamparello just named retired judges Dorothea Wefing and Maurice Gallipoli to head a task force on judicial independence.
The back story is familiar in legal circles.
Gov. Chris Christie declined to renominate Justice John Wallace in 2010 when he came up for his seven-year tenure review.
The Senate then delayed confirmation of Anne Patterson for a year.
The Senate rejected first Philip Kwon, then Bruce Harris — Christie’s next nominees.
While the court operates with two temporary justices, the Senate has refused to hold hearings at all on Robert Hanna and David Bauman, Christie next two nominees.
And then the shocker — Christie announcing in August he would not re-appoint Justice Helen Hoens but would nominate instead an Hispanic, Faustino Fernandez-Vina.
The war has had a chilling effect on the High Court, Lamparello says.
“When a person doesn’t know where their salary is gonna be there next week because they may not be reappointed, or a pension which they were promised, that they were earning credit toward, they may not have, that’s a chilling effect,” Lamporello said.
“I think it’s probably viewed as the most paramount issue facing our court system,” said New Jersey Law Journal Editor Ron Fleury.
At the offices of the New Jersey Law Journal, Fleury agrees there’s a problem.
“The chief problem is that judges can’t truly be independent in their rulings if they are worried about their jobs. That’s what this comes down to,” Fleury said.
We asked if he blamed either the governor or the Senate.
“I don’t assign blame. I do think that the governor started it when he did not reappoint a sitting justice, Justice Wallace, in 2010. But the other branches responded in kind,” Fleury said.
Yesterday, Senate leaders announced they will hold a hearing on the Fernandez-Vina nomination on Oct. 17, a fast-track that surprised some people.
“Not so much surprised as a bit disconcerted because I think it’s not really fair to the other two nominees who have been waiting much longer,” said Fleury.
For years it’s been accepted in legal circles that New Jersey has one of the best supreme courts in the nation. This new Bar Association task force on judicial independence aims to keep it that way.