{"id":19231,"date":"2026-05-01T12:13:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=19231"},"modified":"2026-05-01T12:13:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:13:45","slug":"justice-undone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/justice-undone\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice, Undone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Donald Perryman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Truth Contributor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.”<\/em> \u2014 Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 1.2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who wants a judge who collects political favors deciding their fate?<\/p>\n

Who wants a judge who campaigned for the prosecutor seeking a conviction to be the one weighing that request? Or, a judge who endorsed the sheriff and traded endorsements like currency to be the one determining whether law enforcement violated your rights?<\/p>\n

Nobody. And yet that is precisely what the Ohio Supreme Court just made possible.<\/p>\n

In a 5-1 ruling, five Republican justices eliminated a decades-old ban on judges making partisan political endorsements on April 2\u2014 making Ohio the only state in the nation to permit them.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the ruling was based on a finding that neither party to a dispute challenged, on a question no one asked them to answer, without briefs, without public input, and over a dissenting colleague\u2019s explicit objection. Then they called it a First Amendment victory\u2014 while demolishing the firewall between politics and the bench.<\/p>\n

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly put it in terms that should stop every Ohioan cold: “In this case, the court acted as petitioner, decider, and potential beneficiary.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any other context, we would have a simpler name for what the justices just did to every citizen who will ever need a fair court in this state \u2014 they \u201cplayed in our face.\u201d Brazenly. Without apology.<\/p>\n

The most underexamined consequence of this ruling is what it does to the pipeline of future judges \u2014 and ultimately to the person who will one day need a fair court and may not get one.<\/p>\n

Attorneys drawn to judicial work typically value judicial independence, legal qualifications and reasoning skills. Not those who prioritize working a room or measure success by political alliances built and favors traded. So, I expect the ruling to make endorsement networks the new currency in judicial races, which could discourage good judicial candidates from running altogether.<\/p>\n

“No disagreement there,” a sitting Ohio judge acknowledged to me without hesitation. \u201cIt’s certainly a bad ruling for the independence of the judiciary, and it will make judicial races more partisan.”<\/p>\n

The jurist added that a similar problem exists today with campaign contributions and attorneys contributing to judges\u2019 campaigns. \u201cJudges have to do their best to set that aside in their rulings and keep them impartial,\u201d while emphasizing that recusal and the Ohio code of judicial conduct provide additional guardrails.<\/p>\n

Yet the judge agreed that respected lawyers could be deterred by the prospect of having to fully immerse themselves in partisan endorsement politics just to be competitive in judiciary races and that the Ohio Supreme Court\u2019s decision could accelerate the transformation of judicial races into fully transactional political campaigns, where endorsement trading is expected.<\/p>\n

Even worse, is that every step deeper into partisan machinery pulls the courtroom further from the place it is supposed to be, where facts matter more than friendships and the law answers to no one\u2019s political debts.<\/p>\n

People have largely stopped believing Congress works for them. The U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ethics scandals have destroyed whatever credibility it had left. State courts were the last institution where most people still gave the benefit of the doubt, assuming the person behind the bench was at least trying to be fair. Ohio just made it harder to hold that assumption.<\/p>\n

Prior to the Ohio Supreme Court\u2019s decision, you could be confident that the judge across from you was there because they knew the law, not because they knew the right people. We mostly believed judicial decisions had something to do with justice, not with who endorsed whom in the last election. We were confident that the robe meant something beyond the politics of the person wearing it.<\/p>\n

The April 2, 2026, ruling loosens all of that. “It is bad,” my judicial source admitted. “It may not be incorrect. But it is probably bad for the confidence in the judiciary.”<\/p>\n

Clearly, the prosecutors, sheriffs, careless or unscrupulous business owners, and party officials know exactly what they are doing.<\/p>\n

The person sitting across from them in court \u2014 who had no part in that arrangement \u2014 deserves a judge who got there on merit.<\/p>\n

What they may get instead is a judge who already owes someone a favor.<\/p>\n

Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at <\/em>drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D. The Truth Contributor \u00a0\u00a0A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.” \u2014 Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 1.2   Who wants a judge who collects political favors deciding their fate? Who wants a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[345],"class_list":["post-19231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19232,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231\/revisions\/19232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19231"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}