paper based on The Appeal and the Caperton case should describe how (1)The Appeal informs us about the politics of judicial elections and (2)whether Kennedy’s opinion of the court in Caperton or Roberts’ and Scalia’s dissents provide stronger justifications for how courts should address the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections. Your paper must draw upon details in the novel and the opinions written in the Caperton case.
John Grisham, a lawyer by training, has written a number of novels about the law, many of which have been made into popular movies. The Appeal is a story about a large and powerful chemical corporation that has been sued by residents in a small Mississippi town for wrong full death action. Carl Trudeau, the CEO of the Krane Corporation, is anxious to appeal the verdict to the Mississippi Supreme Court but needs to ensure that the court will provide a friendly and sympathetic forum for his claim. This popular novel is an easy and enjoyable read. However, the story also explores a variety of issues associated with civil litigation and judicial elections. As you read the book, and think about the paper you will write for the assignment in Lesson 4, consider the ideas about civil litigation and the election of judges that are part of the novel’s storyline:
Does it seem like the opposing litigants portrayed in The Appeal are able to bring different amounts of resources to the lawsuit described in the story? Does it seem that these power asymmetries between the parties affects the course of the litigation?
Can the average juror properly assess the complex scientific and medical evidence needed to render a verdict in a case like the one in the novel that deals with the claim that a large corporation has caused a cancer cluster in the small Mississippi town?
Why does the Krane Corporation appeal the verdict instead of just paying the damages and moving on? Why does Krane decide to focus so much attention to Justice McCarthy’s reelection to the Mississippi Supreme Court?
What does the novel tell you about elections in general and judicial elections in particular? Sheila McCarthy was originally appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court and ran unopposed when her first term ended. She now faces opposition in a nonpartisan judicial election. The company that Trudeau and the Krane Corp. hires to navigate through the election campaign has found a “stealth” candidate with no record to attack. Incumbents, such as Sheila McCarthy, on the other hand, have public records that can be used as targets in an election campaign.
What do you make of how the company supporting Trudeau and Krane used polls to attack Sheila McCarthy? One poll question asks “Are you aware that Justice McCarthy is considered the most liberal member of the Mississippi Supreme Court”? (pp 254-257). Do you see a problem with such questions?
Can campaign ads be used to easily attack an incumbent on highly charged issues like the death penalty and crime or label the incumbent as a “liberal” in a conservative state? Iowa Retention Election Ad (Click and watch these ads)
Does Grisham seem to assume that voters are easily manipulated? Is there anything about a non- partisan judicial election that might make such manipulation easier than in a partisan election?
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/556/868/opinion.html
In Module 2 we will focus on how state and federal judges are selected in the American legal system. Lesson 4 begins this evaluation by examining the rather complicated process by which state judges are selected with special attention paid to the use of elections as the method of selecting most judges at the state level. As you will see from your reading in the Clarke [assumed spelling] textbook, states are free to adopt whatever method they wish to use for selecting their judges and don’t have to follow the federal model whereby the president nominates people to serve on the bench, and the Senate gives what the “Constitution” calls his advising consent to these nominations. Indeed, states use a variety of methods for selecting judges; a few, in fact, follow some version of the federal model. Many have adopted some form of what’s called merit selection, and a few have the legislature selected judges. But surprisingly to some people, most state trial and appellate judges are selected through either partisan or non partisan elections; a process which has become very controversial in recent years, and has been criticized by those who feel that it compromises the integrity of judicial independence for candidates to the bench to have to solicit campaign contributions and thus perhaps be beheld into either interest groups or even a few especially generous benefactors. Your reading assignment for this week focuses on the problem of judicial elections and campaign financing. “The Appeal’ is a very enjoyable novel by John Grisham about a court case and a related election for a state Supreme Court justice in Mississippi. Enjoy the novel, but make sure you identify ideas in the book both about how judicial elections mirror elections more generally, and also about the politics and strategies associated with civil litigation; a topic we will devote more attention to in a few weeks. You should also give the 2009 decision by the United States Supreme Court in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Company also in the assigned materials, a close reading too since the events described in this case mirror the so-called fiction described in Grisham’s novel.
ohn Grisham, The Appeal
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