Rivera-Soto’s effort to tie up the court by refusing to participate in its decisions at first blush seemed like a political stunt or a dereliction of duty. After all, judges decide cases. This week, he modified his stance somewhat, limiting his protest to cases where the vote of the temporary justice, Judge Edwin Stern, would change the outcome. Nevertheless, Rivera-Soto’s action and well-reasoned explanation for it demonstrate that any political stunts or dereliction of duty lie elsewhere, specifically in New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney’s and Judiciary Committee Chairman Nicholas Scutari’s refusal to hold a hearing for a duly nominated candidate to fill that vacancy in accordance with the state constitution.
In May, Gov. Chris Christie, expressing the frustration of many over the activist rulings of the state Supreme Court, declined to reappoint Justice John Wallace when his initial seven-year term expired. Instead, he nominated Anne M. Patterson, an attorney whose views Christie believes are more in line with his philosophy of judicial restraint. Although the general practice of his predecessors was to grant “tenure” to sitting justices who wanted it, no one disputes that Christie legally may decline to reappoint a justice whose initial term is up.
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