Washington Legal Foundation by Stephen M. Bainbridge 12/13/2019
What is the judicial role? Are judges mere umpires who call balls and strikes based solely on rules made by others? Or are judges lawmakers in their own right, creating laws and making public policy? The U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case in which those questions could play a determinative role. In addition to being of great jurisprudential interest, however, the case will attract great attention from corporate lawyers, because it may call into question the validity of the judiciary of the state that dominates corporate law.
Delaware’s state constitution imposes two unique requirements on the state judiciary that differentiates its courts from those of all other states. Under the bare majority rule, no more than half of the total number of the members of the state Supreme and Superior courts and the Chancery Court can be from the same political party (50 percent plus one if there is an odd number of judges). Under the major party rule, those judges must be from a “major†political party.
James R. Adams is a Delaware lawyer who has been frustrated in his search for a Delaware judicial position because he is a political independent. Adams sued Delaware Governor Carney in federal court seeking to have the Delaware provisions declared unconstitutional. Delaware argued that Adams lacked standing and, in the alternative, that the judicial-selection provisions fell within the policymaker exception to the First Amendment’s ban on conditioning state government positions on membership in a specific political party. The district court ruled for Adams on both grounds.
More:
https://www.wlf.org/2019/12/13/wlf-legal-pulse/delawares-judiciary-in-the-u-s-supreme-court/
