Fifty years ago, Arizona voters adopted then-state legislator Sandra Day O’Connor’s proposed judicial merit selection system.
It is one of our state’s crown jewels, producing judges of great integrity, quality and fairness — while providing the means to vote out those who fail to meet the highest standards.
But partisan special-interest groups are hijacking the retention process through a campaign against Justice Kathryn King and me called “Vote Them Out!” — a slogan that packs with venom what it lacks in substance.
Extending an effort from 2022 that led to the ouster of two highly qualified judges for purely political reasons, these groups are cynically harnessing anger over our recent abortion decision to replace us with justices who will rubber-stamp their ideological agenda.
They claim the abortion decision reflected the court majority’s policy preferences rather than the law.
Nonsense.
Serious commentators, liberal and conservative, who actually read the decision (which I encourage voters to do), agree it is solidly grounded in law.
We had before us not a question of policy, or even of constitutionality, but simply whether the Legislature in 2022, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbsdecision, restored an earlier abortion restriction.
After careful analysis, we concluded it did.
In a poignant historical moment, my legislator wife immediately joined the effort to overturn our ruling. That caused no marital disharmony because she is a policymaker and I am not.
Shortly thereafter, the Maricopa County Republican Party executive committee “censured” my court for ruling incorrectly, in its view, on certain election challenges. They should debate with their “Vote Them Out!” counterparts over whether we are a right-wing or a left-wing court.
Hint: we are neither. We rule based on the law.
I cannot count the number of cases in which I have voted against my policy preferences. One example is when Gov. Doug Ducey vetoed nearly two dozen conservative bills over a budget dispute with the Legislature.
They were passed again, then challenged by the Arizona School Boards Association. We struck them all down because they were passed unconstitutionally as part of the budget rather than as standalone bills.
I am the only independent ever appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court. I have........