What everybody knows and what too few accept

Don Blankenship directed $3 million of his personal funds to the end of electing Brent Benjamin to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. His apparent aim was to influence the result in an appeal of a case that would cost his company $50 million. His apparent aim, then, was to use money to b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Harvard law review 2009-11, Vol.123 (1), p.104-119
Main Author: Lessig, Lawrence
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Campaign contributions
Campaign funds
Disqualification of judges
Due process of law
Elections
Electoral campaigning
Judges
Judges & magistrates
Judicial corruption
Judicial elections
Laws, regulations and rules
Political economy
Recusal
State court decisions
Supreme Court
U.S.A
Voting behaviour
West Virginia
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Summary:Don Blankenship directed $3 million of his personal funds to the end of electing Brent Benjamin to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. His apparent aim was to influence the result in an appeal of a case that would cost his company $50 million. His apparent aim, then, was to use money to bring about a particular judicial result. While there is nothing illegal or even unethical about his spending $3 million to persuade voters to elect Benjamin to the state Supreme Court of Appeals when Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself from Blankenship's case, this whole sequence of free (or $3 million) speech was cast into a very different light. Whether Justice Benjamin should have recused himself is in the author's view a straightforward question: he should have. By not stepping down, he strengthened the suggestion that money buys results not just in the political branches, but also in the judicial branch.
ISSN:0017-811X
2161-976X