I largely echo the comments made in the article that political affiliation does not necessarily predict where the justices will come out on an issue.
It remains to be seen who Rendell will appoint to fill the seat being vacated by Ralph Cappy in January. So far, judges Darnell Jones, Jeannine Turgeon and Robert Freedberg have expressed interest in the seat.
The election of Democratic state Supreme Court candidates Seamus P. McCaffery and Debra Todd on Tuesday sets the stage for a partisan balancing act in the state appeals courts, pundits said.By the time McCaffery and Todd ascend to the high court in January, Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy will have stepped down, leaving the court evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
Whomever Gov. Edward G. Rendell appoints to take Cappy’s place for the next two years will depend in part on the political will of state Senate Republicans, who must sign off on Rendell’s choice for the job.
But with three appellate court positions to fill, with McCaffery and Todd leaving the Superior Court, Rendell will have room to bargain, court watchers say.
McCaffery, a Philadelphia-based Superior Court judge, ran a populist campaign on the strengths of his military and police service and his notoriety as the founder of “Eagles Court” at the infamously rowdy and now demolished Veterans Stadium. McCaffery led the field of four candidates with 30 percent of the vote.
Todd, a Pittsburgh-based Superior Court judge, raised the least campaign money among the four candidates but finished second with 26.3 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results yesterday.
They defeated Republicans Maureen Lally-Green, also a Superior Court judge, and Mike Krancer, a former chief judge of the state Environmental Hearing Board. Lally-Green and Krancer respectively got 24.4 percent and 19.2 percent of the vote.
Todd said she considered the election close, and even told Rendell his congratulations were premature when he called her late Tuesday night.
“Particularly as a Democrat, you always worry until the numbers are in from the central part of the state,” said Todd, who waited for returns with family and staff at a private gathering in a downtown Pittsburgh hotel.
Todd, who is the first Democratic woman to be elected to the court, said she benefited from at least two trends in the voting Tuesday.
“I do believe there is a public sentiment that is favorable to the Democratic Party,” she said.
Todd was also one of four women elected to a state appellate court seat.
“I think a lot of voters believe that it is important to have a woman’s voice at the table,” she said.
However, her identity as a Democrat will mean little to the mission of the Supreme Court.
“I think that it means something to voters who want to elect judges of one party or another,” Todd said. “From a personal perspective I am there to be a judge, and that is what I have done on the Superior Court.”
“I consider myself a guardian of the constitution and that’s a role that’s not particular to any one political party. That’s my job and I will continue to do it,” Todd said.
McCaffery was attending funeral services yesterday for slain Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy and could not be reached for comment.
Krancer declined to pontificate on the forces that directed the election’s outcome, but congratulated his Democratic opponents. He said he hasn’t decided what he will do next.
“I’m just going to let the dust settle on this. I’m a young person. I have a lot to consider in terms of politics and nonpolitical ventures,” Krancer said. “I would not rule anything out at this point, either way.”
Lally-Green did not return phone calls to her campaign office or chambers.
Lynn Marks, director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts in Philadelphia, said the political makeup of the court will have more impact on the administrative functions of the court than on its decision of cases.
Musical Seats on the Bench...
First of all, congrats to Debra Todd on becoming the first Dem woman elected to the state Supreme Court. I wanted to expand a bit on Blackrobe’s point concerning the political make-up of the Court. While political affiliation certainly counts to some degree, as it pertains to this particular group of justices, I’m not sure it means all that much. In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that conservatives may still enjoy a de facto majority on the Court. Just hear me out for a minute. Justices Eakin and Saylor can safely be called “constructionists”, with Justice Castille not far behind. Justice Baer leans a little left, along with Chief Justice Cappy (who is leaving the Court, as Blackrobe noted). It remains to be seen where the newly elected Justices Todd and McCaffery park their respective ideologies, but as a somewhat-learned observer, I don’t see them serving as bomb-throwers on the Court. The key now will be Rendell’s appointment to Cappy’s seat, which Senate Republicans will need to sign off on. He’ll almost certainly nominate a Democrat, but “what kind” of Democrat Rendell sends will be telling. There is some talk of Rendell renominating Justice Baldwin,w hich would make sense (and defuse any sort of Senate opposition). It should be noted that voters across the state made another bit of history Tuesday night by electing Republican candidate Cheryl Allen to the Superior Court (the first African-American woman to sit on the Superior Court bench). Congrats go to her as well.
Not really
The above comment is a gross oversimplification. As you might expect in a state where judges are elected, the philosophical breakdown between Republican and Democratic judges is almost completely in the one area of law that voters take any interest in, which is criminal law. On criminal justice issues, Baer and Cappy are more liberal, while Castille and Eakin (both ex-D.A.s) are quite far to the right. Saylor (also a former D.A., but only briefly) is actually smack in the middle on these issues and sometimes comes down to the left of Cappy – it can sometimes be difficult to tell that he’s actually a Republican. If there’s a Souter on the Court, at least on these matters, it’s definitely him, much more so than Castille.
On non-criminal issues, each of the justices is more or less all over the map. None of them have much of what you would call an overarching judicial philosophy other than pragmatism. These guys are not quite politicians, but they’re much closer to politicians than they are to scholars. The abstract scholarly tools you would use to analyze the jurisprudence of your Scalias or your O’Connors or your Brennans just aren’t applicable when it comes to these guys.
McCaffery
As for McCaffery, he may turn out to be a bomb thrower, but if so, it will be in favor of prosecutors. He’s an ex-police officer, and he could be as conservative on criminal justice issues as either Castille or Eakin, if not more so. He’s light years further to the right than Saylor.
In civil cases, on the other hand, McCaffery will probably be a relative liberal.
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