Of all the races and ballot issues Michigan voters will decide Tuesday, arguably the most important is one many of us pay too little attention to -- the Michigan Supreme Court.
Thankfully, there is a clear choice, one that could help reverse years of court decisions that have stripped Michigan residents of their rights under the Michigan constitution to hold companies and governments liable for their actions. In the race for Supreme Court, challenger DIANE HATHAWAY is the clear choice over incumbent Clifford Taylor.
The issue here isn't Hathaway's superior experience or years on the bench, though she is well qualified in both areas. Instead, it is the Taylor-led court majority's blatant activism and a decade-long track record of making law from the bench, in the process reversing numerous long-standing court decisions.
During that time Michigan citizens have seen their access to the courts -- their standing to sue, as the court put it -- sharply reduced. Insurance companies have not lost a high court ruling since then.
The most notorious Taylor-led decision was a ruling that the Legislature's very specific declaration in Michigan's seminal 1970 Environmental Protection Act that any person could sue to prevent environmental damage anywhere in the state did not actually mean any person.
Taylor's four-justice majority instead made its own law, stating that only those who could show specific harm by the action in question had a right to sue. Thirty-eight years of precedent out the window, along with the presumption that the law means what lawmakers intended to say.
That's only part of the Taylor story.
In a survey of attorneys who had appeared before the top court conducted for Michigan Lawyers Weekly magazine and published this year, Taylor was rated worst or second-worst in a number of key categories. Preparedness (described as understanding the facts of a case, the issues and the law): last. On whether his opinions address the facts and the law: last. Overall knowledge of the law: last. Overall rating in eight judicial characteristics: last. Compared to his colleagues on the court: last.
Taylor was the first of three justices appointed to the court by former Gov. John Engler, and those three were later joined by Justice Maura Corrigan (who Engler had named to the state Court of Appeals) to form the so-called Engler Majority. Only Corrigan, then, had been elevated to a higher court by voters.
DIANE HATHAWAY, by comparison, has served as a Wayne County Circuit judge since she was elected to the post in 1993. From 1987 to 1993, she was an assistant prosecutor in Macomb County. She got her law degree from the Detroit College of Law in 1987.
She's a veteran jurist in Michigan's biggest and busiest court who has also worked as a prosecutor.
Every court in every state puts its stamp on the law. But very few courts have so repudiated past precedent and citizen rights as the Taylor-led Engler Majority.
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