Ordinarily, you get to know nothing about the people running to be a judge in Arkansas unless you happen to be in the candidate’s circle of friends and family or unless he or she had a previous public life — a lawmaker or prosecutor perhaps — that exposed the candidate’s ideas and predilections about how the public’s business should be conducted. If the candidate is already a judge, you may have become familiar with his or her preferences or biases, which every single judge brings in some way to decision making. Otherwise, all you know is what will fit on a calling card: the candidate’s years in the bar, matrimonial status, number of children, current job and civic memberships, along with the ritual promise to be fair.
Judge Wendell Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals is an exception, although not particularly by his choosing. Some six years ago, he got quoted in the newspaper about the endemic racism in the athletic department at the University of Arkansas after he spoke to some black lawmakers at Fayetteville, which caused the director of the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission to haul him in for violating the ban on public speech by judges. No, Judge Griffen said, the U. S.
Supreme Court years ago struck down those bans and affirmed that judges have the same rights to be heard that the Bill of Rights gives to every other American. Besides, he said, he never made a public utterance about any issue that was before his court or ever likely to be there.
In his role as a Baptist minister and leader of a national religious organization, Griffen over the years has often spoken on moral issues in religious forums, and after the U of A controversy the media on three or four occasions picked up comments that he made about the moral dimensions of the Iraq war, prejudice and the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, which caused more complaints to the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission about a judge making comments in public.
Twice the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with Griffen, and finally so did the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission.
The Arkansas bar is now rewriting the ethical canons for judges to reflect the values that Griffen espoused.
Rarely does one win such clear vindication, but it still could cost him his career. He has an opponent for re-election to the Court of Appeals, which is extremely rare for sitting judges. He, too, would be unopposed were it not for the five-year smear by the director of the discipline commission that he was somehow an unethical judge because he allowed himself to be quoted in newspapers a half-dozen times on matters of public concern (as if he could have stopped it). The Arkansas Democrat Gazette joined the chase, penning at least a dozen editorials attacking the jurist for undermining public confidence in the courts. The paper’s editorial page obviously disagreed with his criticism of President Bush, the war and the University of Arkansas, but the paper eventually acknowledged that he had won his argument that he had a right to utter them — after that right had been affirmed by the Supreme Court and the commission itself. But exercising that right sullies the courts, the newspaper said again this week when it endorsed his opponent, Rita Gruber. Gruber is a former Pulaski County official and now a juvenile judge, a passably good one from what we hear.
Were it not for the controversy over his right to speech, Judge Griffen would be judged on his unassailable judicial record, as an appellate judge and formerly as a quasi-judicial arbiter of worker compensation rights. Even the Democrat-Gazette, which praised his high intelligence and personal likeability, found no exception to his some two thousand decisions as a judge. No question was ever raised about his impartiality or the wisdom of his opinions.
That is good enough for The Leader to endorse him for re-election on May 20.
