Maybe the change was an inevitable byproduct of our current charged and contentious era. Maybe it was naïve to ever think that things were dramatically different in the past. Whichever the case, one thing for sure in 2022 is that public perceptions of the American judiciary as a neutral dispenser of blind justice ain’t what they used to be. And indeed, those altered perceptions may reflect a new, sobering, and thoroughly politicized reality.
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state Supreme Court
state Supreme Court
Two Supreme Court seats are on the ballot this Election Day, offering Republicans the opportunity to flip the state’s highest court. Policy Watch has reached out to each of the four candidates and is publishing their responses from interviews conducted in October. Democrat Lucy Inman and Republican Richard Dietz are squaring off in a race to replace Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson, who is retiring. Both Inman and Dietz are judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
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Two North Carolina Supreme Court seats are on the ballot this Election Day, offering Republicans the opportunity to flip the state’s highest court, which currently includes four Democrats and three members of the GOP. Policy Watch has contacted each of the four candidates and is publishing their responses. Sam J. Ervin, IV is the incumbent associate justice running for reelection as a Democrat. He has been a member of the Supreme Court since 2015. He served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals before that, from 2009 to 2015. He was also a member of the North Carolina Utilities Commission from 1999 to 2009.
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North Carolina Republicans’ long desire to impose a photo identification requirement to vote has been threatened by the legislature’s failure in 2011 to draw constitutional election districts. The Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court majority wrote in its opinion last week that constitutional amendments proposed by a legislature with members elected from unconstitutional racially gerrymandered districts aren’t automatically considered valid.
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Some say NC is a state in which reproductive freedom is implied in its constitution If the federal right to abortion is erased by the U.S. Supreme Court in a few weeks as expected, the legal spotlight will shift immediately to state courts, where experts say judges in some conservative states could surprise everyone and uphold the right to abortion.
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A panel of Superior Court judges on Wednesday replaced a new map for North Carolina’s congressional districts with their own, while deciding that the state House and Senate plans the legislature adopted last week meet constitutional standards set by the state Supreme Court. The trial court decision on this second set of redistricting plans may not be the last word. Republican architects of the district plans and their challengers are all appealing.
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With 2022 primaries looming, plaintiffs hope to secure speedy review by the state Supreme Court State courts are wading into the bare-knuckle fight over new congressional and legislative districts that Republicans say are just fine, but Democrats and outside evaluators say are heavily skewed to Republicans’ advantage.
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