The front page of my local newspaper today featured a story about the General Assembly’s vote to override the Governor’s veto of the legislation allowing magistrates to opt out of marriages. Attracting less attention in the public at large, but important to the readers of this blog, was the Governor’s signature of a bill changing the way that state supreme court justices are elected. The bill, the final version of which is here, is effective immediately. Justices who are appointed to fill a vacancy will be required to run in a multi-candidate election, but once a justice has been elected, he or she will face only retention elections – an up-or-down vote on the justice’s continued service. The idea seems to be to make such elections less political and less expensive. My colleague Michael Crowell wrote a fascinating blog post here on whether retention elections are consistent with the state constitution, including an intriguing discussion of a similar issue arising in Tennessee, where the entire state supreme court recused itself from hearing the matter and a “special supreme court” was convened. Tennessee said retention elections are OK, but for reasons Michael explores, the same result might not obtain here. In other news: Profile of judge fighting cancer. WRAL posted this profile of Superior Court Judge Carl Fox, from Orange County, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and who needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. Judge Fox is a gracious man and very popular with the bench [...]
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