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74 Mo. L. Rev. 507 (2009)
A Plea for Reality

handle is hein.journals/molr74 and id is 513 raw text is: A Plea for Reality Roy A. Schotland' I. THE ENDLESS D EBATE ............................................................................. 508 II. A REPLY TO ADVOCACY AT THE SYMPOSIUM .......................................... 512 III. ARE JUDICIAL ELECTIONS LIKE OTHER ELECTIONS, SHOULD THEY B E? .................................................................................. 517 IV. THE LIVELY, THORNY PROBLEM OF RECUSAL BECAUSE OF CAMPAIGN CONDUCT AND/OR CAMPAIGN FUNDING .......................... 519 V . REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS ....................................................................... 523 VI. STEPS TO REDUCE THE PROBLEMATIC ASPECTS OF JUD ICIAL ELECTIONS ............................................................................... 524 VII. HONORING FIFTEEN CHIEF JUSTICES ....................................................... 527 Thank you for the privilege and the pleasure of joining you, in the best possible state for any discussion of judicial selection and blessedly at a dis- tinguished law school. For me, after twenty-five years of involvement in the judicial election scene and four weeks after retiring from teaching - but not, I hope, from continued involvement - this is a unique opportunity to share views, air questions, consider the ever-evolving changes and challenges, and speak bluntly on a few points. I treasure the friendships I have built with others similarly involved, and I hope that my comments, some of which may seem unrestrained, are taken in the spirit that underlies them. My plea for reality stems from the view that this subject suffers from much myth and much spin. Myth matters when it differs from reality about where we are and 1. Professor Emeritus, Georgetown Univ. Law Center. This will be my last article, after twenty-four years writing on this subject, which may explain the shame- less citations to previous articles. Preferring reality over myth and spin has been a constant. See, e.g., Roy A. Schotland, Myth, Reality Past and Present, and Judicial Elections, 35 IND. L. REv. 659 (2002); Bert Brandenburg & Roy A. Schotland, Justice in Peril: The Endangered Balance Between Impartial Courts and Judicial Election Campaigns, 21 GEO. J. LEGAL ETHICS 1229, 1250, 1254 (2008) (Afterword, Part C., Public Campaign Funding: A Dialog, under Demythologizing Full Public Funding, which argues against over-selling spin by proponents of public funding). The best- ever statement about contact with reality was by Thomas Huxley, the nineteenth- century English intellectual who defended Darwin in famous Oxford debates with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. Wilberforce. ... scornfully asked Huxley whether he was descended from an ape through his grandfather or his grandmother. Huxley had the last word years later, when the Bishop died after being thrown headfirst from a horse .... Huxley wrote in a letter: For once, reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal. John Tiemey, Darwin the Comedian. Now That's Entertainment, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 10, 2009, at D2.

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