Bar association makes 'misleading' call on judge

By John M. Morganelli

Commonwealth Court Judge Ann Covey is the latest target in the continuing effort of the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA) to mislead voters into believing that it has greater insight into the qualifications and abilities of aspiring appellate judges than any other special-interest group.

Covey was recently endorsed by the state Republican Party to fill one of three open seats on the state Supreme Court. Yet the bar association's Judicial Evaluation Commission (JEC) has pronounced Covey "not recommended" based upon its findings that she engaged in "false and misleading" campaign ads in her successful 2011 campaign for Commonwealth Court.

Covey responded in a letter saying PBA's "attempt to color all of my qualifications for the Supreme Court by a single legal and accurate political advertisement is without any sense of balance, fairness or propriety."

She added that the "evaluation process is severely flawed, unbalanced and conducted in a reckless disregard for the truth and personal reputation and appropriate due process."

The fact is that the PBA has a disdain for the democratic process and has attempted for years to take the decision-making on appellate judges out of the hands of citizens and place it in the hands of the elites.

The PBA is a proponent of the so-called merit selection system of appointing appellate judges, which it sells to the public like snake oil. The PBA argues that this system will result in a better judiciary. Unfortunately, its judgment has been so severely wrong so many times that we should all hope a merit selection system that mirrors the PBA's process for judicial evaluations never happens.

For example, the PBA "highly recommended" Joan Orie Melvin for a seat on the state Supreme Court in 2009. She won her election but was later suspended from the court and subsequently convicted of public corruption.

The PBA also recommended Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Joseph C. Waters for the Superior Court in 2013. He was sentenced just last month to a two-year prison sentence for case-fixing.

Former Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who recently resigned from the court in a porn e-mail scandal, was deemed "recommended" when he first ran for Superior Court in 2003, and again when he sought a promotion to the Supreme Court in 2007.

On the other hand, our current chief justice, Thomas Saylor, and judges like Mary Jane Bowes and David Wecht, who have honorably and competently served us on the Superior Court, were deemed "not recommended" by the crystal-ball gazers of the PBA in their first attempts at statewide office.

It's fortunate that the citizens of Pennsylvania knew better and elected Saylor, Bowes, and Wecht despite the PBA's recommendations.

It is ironic that the PBA would justify its unsupportable recommendation relative to Covey on the basis of allegedly "misleading" campaign ads when it is the PBA that continues to mislead by pretending that it somehow speaks for the majority of Pennsylvania lawyers.

Although, in 1998, the PBA lobbied for, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court acquiesced in, designating it as the organization most representative of lawyers in the commonwealth, the truth is that the PBA does not speak for a majority of Pennsylvania's lawyers.

First, out of roughly 50,000 licensed attorneys, about 22,000 (44 percent) are not members of the PBA. Further, for the PBA to suggest that it can speak on behalf of a group that includes prosecutors, public defenders, plaintiffs' trial lawyers, insurance defense lawyers, big-firm lawyers, solo practitioners, and more, all of whom have different and diverse viewpoints, is just plain arrogant. It is for this reason that the PBA's membership has significantly declined through the years.

The PBA is run by executive officers, a board of governors, and a house of delegates, all of which number about 40 lawyers - out of 50,000.

In a nutshell, a handful of elites sit around in a closed, nontransparent meeting, shielded from public scrutiny, and make pronouncements on the political and social issues of the day. They sell these views to the public as representing the majority of Pennsylvania's lawyers.

Although the PBA found Covey's 2011 campaign for Commonwealth Court to be "misleading," the citizens of Pennsylvania did not. They elected her.

I do not know Judge Covey, but by many accounts she has served the state well on the Commonwealth Court. It seems, then, that the "misleading" information supplied to the citizens of Pennsylvania is the notion that the PBA somehow has greater wisdom than regular folks in determining who is best qualified to serve on our appellate courts.