SUPREME COURT/VOTING: “In Pennsylvania, a Republican lawmaker unhappy with a State Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering wants to impeach the Democratic justices who authored it…
Rather than simply fighting judicial rulings, elected officials in some states across the country — largely Republicans, but Democrats as well — are increasingly seeking to punish or restrain judges who hand down unfavorable decisions, accusing them of making law instead of interpreting it. Civil liberties advocates and other critics have a different take: The real law-flouting, they say, is by politicians who want to punish justices whose decisions offend their own ideological leanings…
But political attempts to reshape or constrain state courts have risen sharply in the last 10 years, Mr. Raftery said, propelled by polarization and a fading of the civics-book notion of governmental checks and balances. That became especially true, he said, during the Great Recession that began in 2007, when legislators slashed spending for state judicial systems in the name of balancing budgets — but also, sometimes, in the cause of punishing courts for rulings they disliked… This combative approach, some analysts say, mirrors the heated rhetoric about judicial bias and overreach that has become a staple of national politics.”
-Michael Wines, “Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges.,” The New York Times online, Feb. 14, 2018