Utah’s Chief Supreme Court Justice Matthew Durrant is glad he didn’t need to raise $26 million to run for a job running the state’s judiciary. That’s because Utah doesn’t elect its judges — and Durrant was appointed to his position by a governor in 2000.
But Durrant said Tuesday that that was the kind of money that candidates for the Chief Justice of Wisconsin spent running for election last year. And the problem with that, he told Utah lawmakers Tuesday, is that funds like that needed to run a political campaign are often coming from special interest groups, corporations and attorneys who may appear before the court.
“Now I’ve met a lot of chief justices from states with contested elections. And I have enormous respect for the ones I’ve met,” Durrant said Tuesday in his annual State of the Judiciary address. “I found them to be fair-minded and committed to just results. But my point goes to the system that creates a perception of bias. ... The system undermines confidence in the judiciary.”
Durrant cited one survey that found that in Texas, 83 percent of people felt that asking judges to raise campaign funds affected their decisions. That number was 88 percent in Illinois, he said, and 90 percent in Ohio.
Utah judges have been appointed since 1985 — although in 2020 state Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, proposed amending the Utah Constitution to have judges elected. (His bill never reached a committee hearing.) So far, there has been no legislation introduced this session to change the procedure.
Twenty-one states have elected judges, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Utah is one of 14 states which have judicial vacancies filled by the governor, who appoints a judge from a list of candidates selected by a nonpartisan nominating committee. Judges here do end up on Utahns’ ballots, but as a yes-or-no retention vote — not running against another candidate for the job.
“So we are so, so fortunate here in Utah,” Durrant said. “... judges don’t get selected based on how well they campaign or how much money they could raise. They get selected based on the reputation they have developed as lawyers over the course of their professional lives, for integrity, honesty, fair-mindedness and intellectual capacity.”
Durrant said Tuesday that the current appointment system was “something very precious” in the state’s judiciary, and told lawmakers that it was his hope that “we can work to preserve it.”
In his yearly address to legislators, Durrant usually outlines the court’s funding request priorities as legislators prepare to pass the state budget in the following weeks. This year, Durrant said their budget requests would help fund qualified interpreters and hire more judges and judicial officers to help meet growing case loads. That increased funding, he said, would also be used to help recruit and retain employees in the judicial office.
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