About 100 people found it fitting to wrap up Tuesday's momentous developments in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race by attending a downtown Minneapolis fundraiser for Minnesotans for Impartial Courts, an advocacy group seeking to minimize partisan influence in the state's judiciary.
It was a day in which it was easy to appreciate the importance of keeping judges at least once removed from the partisan fray. The credibility of the Minnesota Supreme Court's unanimous decision for Al Franken is much enhanced by the fact that none of the five justices who decided the case had run for office with political party endorsement and funding by special-interest political action committees.
Minnesotans for Impartial Courts offers what former state Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe calls "preventative medicine." It aims to shield the state's tradition of judicial independence from a national trend toward more politicized elections of judges, by switching from contested elections to yes-or-no "retention" elections for judges. States that use retention elections report comparatively little partisan or special-interest politicking for judges. MIC is asking that a constitutional amendment making that change be placed on the 2010 ballot. That issue will be squarely before the 2010 Legislature.
