Rearing ugly head

Vindictive editorials a disservice

In an editorial, “Her Honor the insider,” which ran on Sept. 10, Justice Courtney Goodson’s candidacy for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court was attacked. The editorial writer had every right to do so.

However, it did not stop there, but wandered far afield.

My campaign for the court that took place a quarter of a century ago was also attacked. It then pointed to other legal “spectacles” I have been involved in, which, I assume, refers to conferences that I have held on judicial-election reform.

Finally, and yet again, this editorial criticized my call to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s office, asking if he would extend judicial courtesy to an Arkansas justice by giving her a seat in the courtroom and saying “Hello.”

Her husband was one of numerous attorneys in the case. Justice Scalia’s office said he would.

Going far back in time, this piece dredges up my campaign of 25 years ago by saying it violated judicial ethics. How? In what respect? It does not say, but what I will underscore is that this current newspaper (then it was the Arkansas Democrat) endorsed my candidacy.

Next it leaps to other “spectacles-at-law” I have staged.

Presumably, this refers to my work in holding a national conference on judicial-election reform that took place in Little Rock in 2012. At that time the editorialist opposed reforms like a private group responding to false ads. How you can oppose such reforms is beyond me. Two and a half years ago an editorial was grossly misleading in stating that state funds would be used; instead, a privately funded group would control the responses.

And, finally, extending judicial courtesy to state Supreme Court justices and others is a long-held tradition embraced by the United States Supreme Court.

This recent editorial, however, apparently sees providing a seat and saying “Hello” as somehow perfidious and conspiratorial. As I have written before, if the editorial page disagrees with the tradition of judicial courtesy, editorialize against that. If it disagrees with Justice Scalia’s decision to grant it, write about that too.

It shrinks, though, from doing so by attacking easier prey, a retired Supreme Court justice, with venomous half-truths and false innuendos.

Paul Greenberg and his editorial assistants wrote a comparable editorial on Feb. 16, 2013. I responded on Feb. 21, 2013, and called it misleading, stating that Greenberg’s mean-spiritedness was part of the problem.

I was cautioned not to respond because of his vindictiveness. The warnings were correct. The editorial writers now continue in the very same vein.

Editorial writers have an awesome responsibility. The good ones express strong points of view in no uncertain terms, but they are constructive, not destructive. The bad ones stumble over their prejudices.

No doubt, this is not the last editorial on this subject. At least the writers will know there will always be a response.

Their attacks are vicious, dishonorable, and unseemly. In engaging in this kind of conduct, the editorial page does the state and this newspaper a real disservice.