Twenty seven former state Supreme Court justices from 19 states (including West Virginia) aren't the only ones faulting Chief Justice Brent Benjamin from refusing to quit a $50 million case involving Massey Energy Co.
As The Associated Press reports, 10 (corrected from 11) other "friend of the court" briefs have been filed at the U.S. Supreme Court by a wide array of 48 different entities.
They range from such public interest groups as Common Cause and Public Citizen to several large multinational corporations including Wal-Mart and PepsiCo.
Ten of the filings argue that Benjamin created an appearance of impropriety by staying in the case, given the more than $3 million that Massey CEO Don Blankenship spent in 2004 to help get him elected.
Even Benjamin's peers, the U.S. Conference of Chief Justices, has weighed in. While not taking sides in the appeal (the other 10 briefs are in support of petitioners Harmon Mining and Hugh Caperton), its filing cites the spectre of the huge support Blankenship provided Benjamin's campaign.
Other groups targeting Benjamin in their briefs include the American Bar Association, the League of Women Voters, several defense bar groups and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
The ABA has posted several of the briefs (2/3 down the page), as has the Brennan Center on its page devoted to the pending appeal.
06 January 2009
Benjamin Gets it from All Sides in Massey Case
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2 comments:
It sounds like the best strategy to win court cases would be to contribute to the campaigns of your judicial enemies and then get then thrown off of the case for conflict of interest. Why don't liberal judges have to recuse themselves from all cases involving people who contributed to their campaigns? What is the dollar value at which contributions push you past the conflict of interest threshold? Why isn't the extra dollar beyond that a limit on free speech, since courts have found that political contributions are speech? Whenever the reports show everyone on one side of an argument, it pays to look at it from the other side just in case they're all wrong and rushing to set an unsustainable precedent.
If Blankenship bought the election for Benjamin, I'm still waiting for the money for my vote.
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