(CN) – Midterm judicial elections in California don’t usually attract much publicity, but with Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky staring down a recall vote and 17 incumbent judges facing challenges for their seats in June, the upcoming race has triggered concerns that politics has invaded what should be an impartial and apolitical branch of government.
Judge Stuart Rice, president of the California Judges Association, issued a letter Thursday decrying the politically charged tenor of the June election and urging his colleagues to support the incumbent judges.
“A fair and impartial judiciary is a cornerstone of our democracy. Yet, throughout our state, keeping the courts free from the influences of political partisanship and favoritism is under a serious threat. Sitting judges are being challenged in the upcoming June election for doing their jobs within the authority provided them under the law. This is not a valid reason for voters to remove them from office,” Rice wrote.
“We want judges who will rule on cases based on the facts and the law, and not what is perceived as good ‘policy.’ We do not want ‘political judges’, nor do we want political judicial elections. A judge’s removal by the voters should be reserved for situations involving illegal or unethical conduct, not a perceived difference of opinion or political philosophy.”
It’s a view shared by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “I want judges deciding cases based on the law and the facts, not public opinion,” he said in an interview Thursday.
Chemerinsky, who has denounced the recall effort against Persky as misguided, again came to the judge’s defense and called the move to unseat him “troubling.”
In 2016, Persky sentenced Stanford student Brock Turner, then 19, to six months in jail and probation, based on applicable statutes and a recommendation from the California Department of Probation, for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.
That sentence outraged those who believed it was appallingly lenient, even if lawful.
While tens of thousands of signatures have been collected to put Persky’s recall on the June ballot, judges up and down the state are lining up to support him. To them, kicking Persky out off the bench for following the law amounts to an attack on independent jurisprudence.
“The thing that is most troubling with the recall election is they’re targeting him based on one ruling he made. If we start doing that it’s going to start affecting judges’ behavior,” Chemerinsky said. “When we vote for judges, to the best of our ability, we are voting on their competence and ethics, not their rulings.”
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, said situations like Persky’s can be an easy launchpad for agitators looking to whip up voters.
“It’s very common and easy for rulings that other judges of many different stripes and philosophies agree was the correct decision to get turned into something people can rail against, like saying they’re soft on crime or soft on sexual assault,” Olson said. “It’s easy to make judges look bad for doing what may be a good job.