oracle
10-03-2002, 03:12 PM
Another Sleazy Court (http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin100302.asp)
<font size=1>New Jersey’s supreme court goes to work.</font>
Mark Levin
I thought the wheels of justice grind slowly. Then again, I never litigated before the hyper-efficient justices of the New Jersey supreme court.
On Monday, around 5 P.M., Sen. Robert Torricelli announced that he would not seek reelection. On the same day, the New Jersey Democratic party, among others, asked the superior court and the New Jersey supreme court to allow the ballots for the November election to be changed. The next day, Tuesday, the New Jersey supreme court took up the case directly and scheduled oral arguments for the following morning. On Wednesday morning, the court heard oral arguments for 2-1/2 hours. A mere six hours later, the justices ruled unanimously that Torricelli's name must be removed from the ballot and replaced with "a candidate duly selected by the Democratic State Committee." In other words, even if the Democrats had not agreed on a candidate by the time of this ruling, they would have been free to continue searching for the candidate with the highest poll numbers.
The justices were twitching like crack addicts to get this decision out by last night, and the opinion reflects their "deliberative" state of mind. The opinion consists of seven pages, double-spaced. The caption is two pages in length, the order is two pages in length, the recitation of facts consists of one page, and the entirety of the court's legal reasoning takes up all of two pages. They could at least have thrown in a couple of recipes to give their opinion more weight.
But the economy of words alone does not do this decision justice. The court found two cases on which it relied for purported precedent in rewriting New Jersey's election laws. The first case, Kilmurray v. Gilfert, is cited for the proposition that "it is in the public interest and the general intent of the election laws to preserve the two-party system and to submit to the electorate a ballot bearing the names of candidates of both major political parties as well as of all other qualifying parties and groups." [Emphasis added.]
...
Click here to read more (http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin100302.asp)
<font size=1>New Jersey’s supreme court goes to work.</font>
Mark Levin
I thought the wheels of justice grind slowly. Then again, I never litigated before the hyper-efficient justices of the New Jersey supreme court.
On Monday, around 5 P.M., Sen. Robert Torricelli announced that he would not seek reelection. On the same day, the New Jersey Democratic party, among others, asked the superior court and the New Jersey supreme court to allow the ballots for the November election to be changed. The next day, Tuesday, the New Jersey supreme court took up the case directly and scheduled oral arguments for the following morning. On Wednesday morning, the court heard oral arguments for 2-1/2 hours. A mere six hours later, the justices ruled unanimously that Torricelli's name must be removed from the ballot and replaced with "a candidate duly selected by the Democratic State Committee." In other words, even if the Democrats had not agreed on a candidate by the time of this ruling, they would have been free to continue searching for the candidate with the highest poll numbers.
The justices were twitching like crack addicts to get this decision out by last night, and the opinion reflects their "deliberative" state of mind. The opinion consists of seven pages, double-spaced. The caption is two pages in length, the order is two pages in length, the recitation of facts consists of one page, and the entirety of the court's legal reasoning takes up all of two pages. They could at least have thrown in a couple of recipes to give their opinion more weight.
But the economy of words alone does not do this decision justice. The court found two cases on which it relied for purported precedent in rewriting New Jersey's election laws. The first case, Kilmurray v. Gilfert, is cited for the proposition that "it is in the public interest and the general intent of the election laws to preserve the two-party system and to submit to the electorate a ballot bearing the names of candidates of both major political parties as well as of all other qualifying parties and groups." [Emphasis added.]
...
Click here to read more (http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin100302.asp)