Book Review: The Appeal by John Grisham

In John Grisham's The Appeal a small town Mississippi husband-and-wife trial lawyer team win a large verdict in a toxic tort case. The CEO of the defendant company, the Trudeau Group, then hires questionable consultants to determine what his next step should be. The consultant, a clandestine organization based in Florida, specializes in rigging judicial elections in favor of business-friendly judges. (You can Find a more detailed description on: Wikipedia).

The book is similar in style to Grisham's other novels. It is plot driven, rather than character driven, but in a way that works well. The bulk of the novel deals with the mechanizations and plotting of the judicial election. The New York Times called it "a primer on... how to rig an election." (NY Times). It is creative, impressive, and scarily realistic. The ever-exciting process of writing and arguing an appeal, however, is not discussed.

The characters are dragged along by external circumstance until near the end of the novel. They aren't flat but, similar to real life, they aren't exploding with surprise. Towards the last few chapters, however, as the election comes to a close and the appeal comes up for review, several of the main characters are finally faced with tough decisions, and show very real struggle.

The novel is, overall, pessimistic, but in the end there is some awakening in the main character. "There's light shining into this darkness, a slight promise of change based on pure and growing disgust with the status quo." (Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe).

USA Today points out that The Appeal is very similar to a real dispute currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, where a newly elected State Court judge declined to recuse himself from a case involving one of his biggest contributors. (USA Today). [Update: On June 8, 2009, the Supreme Court released its decision in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co., holding that, under such circumstances, due process required recusal. (Coverage: Brennan Center, The Economist)]. The UK Times argued that it borrowed from Erin Brockvich, but the two have nothing in common other than involving a toxic tort case.

In New York, like most places, we have some great judges, and some poor ones. Under our system, rather than holding a primary, the political party leaders appoint their candidates, who then submit a ballot with 500 signatures to a Court of Appeals Committee and are then given a rating (qualified or unqualified). The candidates are then included in a general election. Independants can also run in the general election, without being endorsed by a recognized party, but must collect a ballot with between 3500 and 4000 signatures, depending on the size of the district, or 5% of the number of votes in the most recent gubernatorial election, whichever is less.

New York's judicial election system has been highly criticized, albeit in a slightly different manner from Grisham's novel. Because the political parties appoint their candidate without a primary (thus, in most cases, avoiding the need for direct fundraising by the candidates) local political leaders have a large amount of clout in judicial elections. Often, the party leaders will meet amongs themselves and compromise on a candidate, who will then run unopposed. In effect, rather than election or appointment by an elected official, the candidates are sometimes being selected by local political heavyweights through back-room deals. Independants, trying to run without the support of a major party, have a much higher threshold for getting onto the ballot.

In 2006, New York's system was held unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court, but the Supreme Court later reversed that decision in 2008, finding that rule does permit a "reasonably diligent" independant candidate to get onto the ballot and that the First Amendment cannot be used to regulate the internal processes of political parties. (New York State v. Lopez-Torres).

Overall, there does not appear to be a "right" judicial appointment system. If there are open elections, such as in Mississippi, there will be fundraising and special interest issues; if there are political appointments, such as Federal Judges, the appointment is by its nature political (see, e.g. here); and if there is a system run by the political parties, such as New York, then the system will be effected by questions of local corruption.

What we need are independant judges who will be above politics and special interst groups (See, e.g., here and here); how to accomplish that, however, is a difficult question.