Ian Ayres guest blogs at The New York Times :
Transparency in government has a glorious tradition. Justice Louis Brandeis long ago said, “publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” But there exists in our government a central mechanism of democracy that stands against this cult of disclosure — the voting booth. Ballot secrecy was adopted toward the end of the nineteenth century to deter political corruption. Before the secret ballot, people could buy your vote and hold you to your bargain by watching you place that vote. Voting booth privacy disrupted the economics of vote buying, making it much more difficult for candidates to buy votes because, at the end of the day, they could never be sure who had voted for them....
Adam Liptak recently reported on another study showing that the decisions of judges are biased in favor of their contributors:
In nearly half of the [Louisiana Supreme Court cases reviewed], over a 14-year period [that] ended in 2006, a litigant or lawyer had contributed to at least one justice, sometimes recently and sometimes long before. On average, justices voted in favor of their contributors 65 percent of the time, and two of the justices did so 80 percent of the time.
But instead of stepping away from the democratic advantages of judicial elections, it would be possible to mandate that contributions to judicial candidates be given anonymously — through something like a donation booth or a blind trust.
Read the full post here.
Comments