here's something unseemly about the spectacle surrounding Superior Court Judge Maria Lopez. Not the anger and recriminations. She's fair game for refusing to imprison an admitted child kidnapper and sexual assaulter. What's troubling is the blood sport and political meddling now on display.
Do we really want the Legislature to be responsible for disciplining our judges? Of course not. On a good day - and there aren't enough - the state Legislature is a mediocre branch. On a bad day - and there are too many - it's a joke.
Yet House Minority Leader Francis L. Marini (R-Hanson), invoking a vestige of the post-Colonial era, wants to initiate proceedings to remove Lopez from the bench in the General Court. Bad idea, Fran.
There's a much more sensible and dispassionate way to balance judicial accountability with independence - appoint judges to terms, forcing them to undergo periodic reviews if they want to keep their robes for another term or more.
In Massachusetts, judges are appointed with tenure to age 70. It is one of only three states in the United States without a reappointment mechanism for any of its judges, according to the American Judicature Society's Web site (ajs.org). The others are neighboring New Hampshire, where judges also serve until age 70, and Rhode Island, where there is no mandatory retirement age.
In 21 states, all judges are popularly elected to fixed terms. That ensures accountability but limits independence and injects politics and money into the rarefied judicial realm. In 10 other states, lower-court judges are elected and justices of higher courts are appointed and reappointed to set terms. In 10 states, judges are appointed to terms, ranging from one to six years, and then are returned, usually for a longer term, or removed by yes-or-no referenda called retention elections.
In the remaining states, judges are initially appointed to fixed terms, subject to reappointment, generally to terms of longer duration. New Jersey is a hybrid. After an initial seven-year appointment, judges are eligible for tenure to age 70.
Connecticut, for example, appoints judges to eight-year terms. They are then evaluated by a commission, the governor renominates, and the Legislature confirms for another term. Vermont (six years) and Maine (seven) are similar. In Vermont, the General Assembly votes on retention.
The Bay State has a non-legislative vehicle to discipline judges, the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The next press release I receive from this hyper-secretive agency will be the first. The panel has nine unpaid members and a staff of four lawyers, a paralegal, and a secretary.
In the past five years, the office has investigated 862 complaints (172 per year), dismissed 830 (97 percent), and ''informally adjusted'' 32 with reprimands, admonitions, or forced retirements, nearly all of them confidential, except for two public reprimands in 1998, one with a suspension.
Why shouldn't the public and the bar be told when a judge is sanctioned, even for lesser offenses? It would raise public confidence that the judiciary is not a self-regulated branch.
Judges cannot be sealed from scrutiny, criticism, or even the occasional political attack. They're political creatures, their appointments often the fruit of quiet, career-long politicking.
Our random sampling of confirmation files of 44 of the 133 judges and clerk-magistrates named since 1996 by Governors Paul Cellucci and William F. Weld reflects this.
Less than one percent of the state's residents contribute to political campaigns during a state election cycle. In our sample, though, 97.7 percent (43 of 44) of the judges and clerks gave to more than one candidate in the prior three years. All told, they gave $130,000, about one-fourth to Weld, Cellucci, or Lieutenant Governor Jane Swift, plus a few tell-tale $1,000 checks to the presidential campaigns of Pete Wilson (Weld's choice in 1996) or George W. Bush (Cellucci's this year).
Exhibit A is Joseph I. Macy, named Taunton District Court judge in 1998. In three years, he donated $10,640 to various political candidates. In fact, 61 of 177 checks drawn on one particular bank account were to politicians. We know this because he noted the check numbers in his disclosure form.
Congratulations, Judge Macy. That's politics - not subtle, to be sure - but where it belongs, before the appointment.
A political hothouse like the Legislature is the last place we should go to air grievances or vent complaints about a controversial, even outrageous, decision by a judge. Any judge.
