Courts

Selina Meyer's New Project: Getting People To Care About State Supreme Court Elections

Battleground supreme court elections will make a huge difference

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Electing supreme court justices makes no sense. As long as courts are asked to perform judicial review, populating their ranks with political hacks is just begging for the lowest common denominator. It’s how you end up with Roy Moore masquerading as if defacing the public courthouse with ugly, giant slabs of the Ten Commandments makes one a serious jurist. It’s certainly possible to elect a competent supreme court justice, but if the general populace struggling to choose candidates based on vague policy promises is hard, gauging someone’s feelings about ripeness is next to impossible.

So obviously, several states have elected state supreme courts and they’re mostly nightmares. But until states get around to fundamental constitutional change, the only way to deal with the damage a state supreme court can dish out is an educated electorate.

This tweet went bonkers this week.

Which got me wondering what the actress is up to lately and — all that aside — she really does give us a lot and not just in acting though it is a testament to her career that she even got an Emmy for the show that nobody watched. But now there’s a new adventure of old Julia… raising awareness about state supreme court races.

I’ve been doing a lot of work for downballot [races] and I have been following what’s going on in Washington and around our country fairly avidly. And disturbed by a great bit of it.

So it became clear particularly now that state and local officials affect our lives as much as our senators and congresspeople, et cetera, so I thought that would be a good way to engage and bring awareness to candidates who don’t really get awareness.

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In this week’s installment of The Downballot podcast, Julia Louis-Dreyfus joined the hosts David Beard and David Nir to discuss her fundraising efforts (JusticewithJulia.com) for the supreme court races in Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio, where seven candidates are up

For someone who played the president, it’s nice to know Louis-Dreyfus understands the importance of races that don’t get as much of a spotlight.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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