Oregon Supreme Court Candidate (we hope) Jack Roberts Responds to Recalls, Initiatives

October 27, 2005

SHARE

Jack Roberts wrote to the Victoria Taft blog today about my rant pertaining to M 37 and judicial activism in Oregon. See the previous post here.

Jack wrote: Victoria, your history is a little rusty. The courts overturned a measure setting campaign contribution limits passed in 1994 by a margin of 851,014 to 324,224. They also overturned Measure 62, a hodgepodee of campaign rules put together by public employee unions that passed in 1998 by 721,448 to 347,112.

Both those measures could fairly be characterized as initatives supported by the left, yet the court threw them out. I’m not defending the decade-long record of judicial activism by the Oregon Supreme Court, but I think we should be careful about characterizing this as a simple left-right split.

I also think the worst thing we can do is start recalling judges whose decisions we disagree with. I agree with those who believe recall should be limited to true corruption and malfeasance, not policy disagreements.Judicial elections are another thing. There we as voters have the right to choose judges whose reasoning and values we respect.

27 October, 2005 07:41



Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com