Supreme Court Case-NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS et al. v. LOPEZ TORRES et al.
Under New York’s current Constitution, State Supreme Court Justices are elected in each of the State’s judicial districts. Since 1921, New York’s election law has required parties to select their nominees by a convention composed of delegates elected by party members. An individual running for delegate must submit a 500-signature petition collected within a specified time. The convention’s nominees appear automatically on the general-election ballot, along with any independent candidates who meet specific statutory requirements. Respondents filed suit, seeking, inter alia, a declaration that New York’s convention system violates the First Amendment rights of challengers running against candidates favored by party leaders and a ban mandating a direct primary election to select Supreme Court nominees. The Federal District Court issued an introductory injunction, pending the ratification of a new state statutory scheme, and the Second Circuit declared. Because a political party has a First Amendment right to limit its membership as it wishes, and to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform, a State’s power to set down party use of primaries or conventions to select nominees for the general election is not without limits.
For 10 years, New York depended on political party primaries to nominate general election candidates for Supreme Court justice, but that process dejected qualified candidates and created improper, expensive, and potentially demeaning fundraising by judicial candidates.
So the legislature substituted an indirect party primary system, at which delegates are elected who, in turn, select general election candidates at political party conventions. The Second Circuit concluded that the delegate convention statutes enabled political parties to put into effect too much influence at the expense of the uprising party members or dissatisfied candidates and struck those statutes down as facially unconstitutional and brought back the discredited primary process. The issue in this case is whether the delegate-convention system is facially unconstitutional because it allows party leaders to defeat the ambitions of party members.
I choose to declare that the New York Board of Elections should be allowed to hold a direct primary for electing State Supreme Court nominees. I also allow them to run against people that are not a primary leader and not/favored by party leaders. I would allow this because it is not right to file a ban on direct primaries because these primaries will prove who the best candidate for Supreme Court Judge is. These conventions and primaries will let us find out which candidate will be best suited for the job and let use which person is favored more by party leaders. I think that it is fair for party leaders to support Supreme Court nominees because it will boost their popularity and it will be proof of how good a judge they really are and how popular they will be when they take office. I think party leaders should be allowed to act as they are as long as they do not act unconstitutionally.
