Shirking in the Judicial Branch

In this Time Magazine article, the author discusses special interests essentially “buying” judges that they believe will support their interests. The author claims that big businesses, corporate lobbyists, and others contribute significant amounts of money to getting judges elected. The author claims that this is a problem because “as money floods into judicial elections, we are getting courts that are filled with judges whose first loyalty is not to justice or to the general public – but to insurance companies, big business and other special interests”. In class terms it seems as though this author is accusing judges of economic shirking, as discussed by Kau and Rubin.

According to Kau and Rubin, congressmen are influenced by contributions from interest groups, though they would not say that this is necessarily shirking. One could vote in favor of legislation that supports both constituents and special interests. Theoretically, justices also could vote in an ideological way that matches the ideology of their constituents. That being said, Kau and Rubin do not address the issue of justices behaving ideologically, and/or shirking.

This author seems to be most concerned with the fact that justices are responding to economic contributions by special interest. However, it seems as though the judicial branch was in many ways designed to allow ideological shirking but not economic shirking. Many judges are given appointment for life terms, which both eliminates any incentive to contribute funds to justices, but also almost facilitates ideological behavior, as they can never be “punished” for ideological shirking. My concern is not that "shirking" occurs, but rather that it is economic rather than ideological. The election of justices in some states simply creates another politically driven body, and does not truly serve its purpose as a judicial branch dedicated to justice rather than the interests of either constituents or special interests.