EDITORIALS : For Rita Gruber
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/224911/
YOU MAY not recognize her name,
Gentle Reader and Dear Voter.
Which is understandable. Just about the only time you might see Rita Gruber mentioned in the public prints is when she’s doing something to improve the judicial system—not exactly riveting stuff unless you happen to be one of the poor souls enmeshed in it. The Hon. Rita Gruber has been one of those judges who, over the years, has quietly, effectively, unceasingly done her share—and more—to make the administration of justice simpler, fairer and more effective. The rousing speeches she leaves to others, for which we can all be grateful.
Serving her fourth term as a circuit judge in the district that includes Pulaski and Perry Counties, she’s specialized in juvenile justice. No wonder she’s been endorsed in this race by all those chapters of the Fraternal Order of Police, not to mention firefighters.
You name a hopeful new approach to preventing juvenile crime, or just taking care of troubled kids and their families, and odds are that Judge Gruber has tried it: from working with the Quapaw Council of the Boy Scouts to lining up support for the boot camp at Fort Robinson to helping teenage mothers and their own mothers adjust.
Lest the voter think Judge Gruber is familiar only with matters of juvenile justice, she practiced law in and around Little Rock for a decade before taking her seat on the bench. Nor has her experience been limited to arguing and adjudicating the law. Old-timers may recall that, during the interregnum in Pulaski County government before Buddy Villines was elected county judge, Mrs. Gruber was chosen to serve as interim county judge. It figures. She’s just the kind of goodgovernment type—and competent administrator—the county would turn to in a tight. Judge Gruber’s various awards for volunteer work—from the Salvation Army, Boy Scouts, Chamber of Commerce, Mental Health Services, you name it—would cover a good-sized wall. And that doesn’t include the recognition she regularly receives from the bar and various legal organizations. Well-respected she is.
IF ELECTED to the state’s Court of
Appeals, Judge Gruber would
arrive with some ideas about how to improve the administration of justice on that level, too, especially when it comes to juveniles. When an appeals court sits and thinks on a case for a year or two, maybe even longer, that’s a lo-o-ng time for a 5-year-old to worry and wonder about whether he’s going back to mama, grandma, or on to another foster home. It would be good to have a judge on the Court of Appeals who understands the importance of deciding such cases while the juvenile in question is still a juvenile.
Judge Gruber combines a concern for those before her with a businesslike dispatch. If she doesn’t make the headlines very often, all the better. That’s another recommendation for her candidacy. She’s competent, not flashy.
Rita Gruber has three opponents in this race for the Court of Appeals: a sitting judge, a preacher and a politician. They’re all named Wendell Griffen, a name you may remember seeing all over the papers when he tangled—lengthily, vociferously, and finally successfully—with the state’s judicial ethics committee. At the end of a controversial series of court cases, he won. (Congratulations again, your honor. ) The dignity of the law lost.
Races for the bench in this state can now be more like the no-holds-barred kind that characterize partisan politics. It’s not a step up. The Hon. Rev. Wendell Griffen—or any other candidate for judicial office in the state of Arkansas—is now free to indulge in the kind of political invective he’s spouted over the years. That’s unfortunate. If the judiciary is going to stay above politics, it doesn’t need a judge who keeps making political speeches. The politics of a judge should be a mystery, by which we mean politics in the usual partisan sense—as in Republican / Democrat, left / right, conservative / liberal rather than a general political philosophy. Everybody, especially someone in public office, should have one of those.
By now Judge Griffen has delivered some real stemwinders—on every subject from the evils of Republicans to basketball at the University of Arkansas and the racial politics thereof. His oratorical style is catchy, but we wouldn’t describe it as judicious. As in this description of a university policy he didn’t much care for: “Paint and perfume may improve its appearance, but they do not change manure into bread.” A pungent metaphor, but not exactly a model expression of judicial temperament. The essence of Judge Griffen’s defense was well stated by one of the expert witnesses in his case, Professor Morton Gitelman of the University of Arkansas’ law school: “Judges like everyone else have a right to be obnoxious.” Happily, that doesn’t mean the voters have to approve Wendell Griffen’s high-flying style when he’s got an audience to stir up. Which is another reason we’re endorsing Rita Gruber today.
JUDGE GRIFFEN has softened his
tone considerably as election day
approaches. He seemed particularly subdued during our interview here at the Democrat-Gazette.
When we mentioned that his critics think he makes the newspaper too often, His Honor said that of course he makes the news—every time he delivers a decision or a family member gets some honor. As if he had no idea what we were referring to. When, of course, sharp as he is, surely he did.
This was the new, dignified, softspoken Wendell Griffen—not the Fighting Judge we remember so vividly. (How could anyone forget those performances ?) But just wait till politics picks up in the fall as the presidential campaign and its partisan emotions reach their quadrennnial apogee. Will the Fighting Judge reappear on the stump ? We’d rather not find out. We’d rather leave the Court of Appeals to more judicious temperaments. It would be nice to have an appellate judge who was just an appellate judge, thank you, not a political lightning rod.
Wendell Griffen tells us he loves to campaign. We believe him. He’s open, gregarious, hail-fellow-well-met. Never met a stranger. Establishes a personal bond with everyone he meets. We’d probably buy an insurance policy from him before he finished his preliminary pitch. We’ve always liked him—as a person. But not as a judge who thinks he can be a crowd-pleasing orator, too, without ever tarnishing the dignity of the judiciaryand undermining the public’s confidence in its impartiality.
Nothing may threaten the independence of the judiciary like accustoming people to think of a seat on the state’s appellate bench as just another political office rather than one removed from politics-as-usual. The credibility of justice, like that of many virtues, depends in large measure on the observance of the proprieties.
No doubt about it, Wendell Griffen would make one heck of a populist politician. But the state’s Court of Appeals needs judges who are above the usual hurlyburly, not diving into the middle of it. The court needs Rita Gruber.