News Oct 8, 2014 at 4:00 am

Washington's Court Races Have Enough Problems Without John "Zamboni" Scannell Being on the Fall Ballot

This race shows what’s wrong with our system of electing judges. the stranger

Comments

1
How about we amend the constitution to put judges on the bench by executive appointment after vetting by a panel composed of the state Bar and the legislature and reserve elections for recall only in extraordinary cases like any state with any sense would do?
2
Take a Constituional Amendment. We The People take their right to vote seriously, we vote for all sorts of little special districts, so who's paying for the Amendmemnt?

Which member(s) of the Legislature and the Bar get to pick for us?

Every decade there is a Commission that studies the issue and decides to leave it alone as selection/retention could be worse.
3
No, elected judges are the worst. By far.
4
Why does The Stranger hate this man?
5
@1

Thank you, Very, very, very few voters have the time or inclination to look deeply into a candidate this far down ballot. So given that name recognition is likely the deciding factor for most voters, judgeships, particularly lower court judgeships are ripe for being bought by some outside group. I am equally as opposed to the Koch brothers swamping Grey's Harbor County with a freshly degreed from Liberty University Judicial Candidate as I would be to the ACLU swamping Yakima airwaves with ads for a fresh from, wait... I can't think of a fake university created by the left for the sole purpose of grooming religious politicians.

Judges should not have to engage in pure politics to be judges. Impartial...or something like that.
6
I love the system suggested @1, known as the "Missouri Plan." http://judgepedia.org/Commission-selecti…

33 states already use that one, and if it weren't for the immense unlikelihood of Olympia amending our state constitution I'd almost be hopeful.

But I fear getting that done in our legislature is less likely even than, say, Jess Spear passing a rent control bill.
7
Judicial candidates, including sitting judges, duck behind the Code of Judicial Conduct to avoid saying anything of value, but it's disingenuous. The Supreme Court has said that judicial candidates have First Amendment rights:



The Minnesota Supreme Court's canon of judicial conduct prohibiting candidates for judicial election from announcing their views on disputed legal and political issues violates the First Amendment.



Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, 536 U.S. 765, 788, 122 S. Ct. 2528, 2542, 153 L. Ed. 2d 694 (2002).



That doesn't mean that judicial candidates should make their views known. But claiming they cannot is untrue.
8
you have actual sitting judges where a jury found they in their role as an employer at the court house they committed malicious violations of civil rights and awarded damages == talking Fred Bonner here -- and nobody knows. Judges who went into the jury room in an assault case and told the jury that folks like this guy on trial here usually are found guility. Talking Fred Bonner here. that got the conviction reversed when the bailiff, good man, ratted him out. Or judges who have been admonished for misusing their official letterhead to intervene for a friend in another court. Talking Fred Bonner here. Then the latest recently a judge was found to have extracted thousands in public benefit by lying saying he ws car pooling when he wasn't.


talking, Fred Bonner here.





why are you wasting time on this dirty-Gandolph disbared jerk? We have a sitting judge who needs to go. BTW he got the civil rights jury verdict overturned pleading to the 9th circuit he couldn't quite clearly understand the rules of bias enough. A sitting judge getting off by pleading he doesn't know about rules of bias!!!!! and this is just the stuff we know about.
9
The voters can elect anyone they chose. No bureaucrat should be allowed to prevent a citizen from running for public office. Whether or not the lawyer lobby a.k.a. The Bar Association counts him as a member or not may influence some voters, but should have no say in a citizens right to run for office. I am amazed at the anti-democracy comments posted here.
10
Sanders, what a mainstream milktoast you have turned into! Scannell stands for exactly the same lefty values that The Stranger trumpets time and again. The same reasons I tune in every election season to see the endorsements. Why fail to show such a guy support now?





I'll get to the point. Scannell was my lawyer.





In 2004, the King County Library System - one of the single largest library systems in the nation - violated WA State employment law, as pertains to librarians and library staff in particular, by firing staff without cause. There is special state statute relating to library staff, sadly unlike all the other poor saps in the private market.





KCLS ignored state law, fired approximately 150 staff right on the eve of signing their first ever union contract. A brutal housecleaning move before said 150 staff could be shepherded into the new union negotiations. The whole business was rotten in a number of ways. Don't even ask about how we were structurally prevented from working enough hours to qualify for benefits nevermind much in the way of unemployment insurance.





I was among the minimum 6 person required to form a class action (3 librarians, 3 library assistants in our case) who were represented by Scannell. In the end, we did not prevail on technicalities. So, this do-gooder case among Scannell's many didn't rate much notice. Unlike his celebrated case against the City of Seattle for abuses during the WTO protests. Unlike his case against Seattle for abuses of employee designations like "seasonal" "substitute" "temporary" and "parttime" used by The City to deny benefits and pensions to employees.





You would think that lawyers would have flocked to our sides given the established state statute that was violated (re: librarians) along with caselaw around substitute employees (established by Scannell). You would think, but we were largely ignored as clients by lawyerdom. Only Scannell took up our cause.





Say what you like about scrappy Scannell looking weird and taking the oddball cases but that's what merits my respect. Slick lawyers who chase money are a dime a dozen. Scannell is the genuine article.





Re-bar Scannell!

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.