Lieutenant governor convinces chief justice that she can handle job

The chief justice wants the Supreme Court to settle the school-funding case by year's end.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court said he initially had questions about the ability of Lt. Gov. Maureen O'Connor to serve as a justice on the court, but she won him over.
"I wondered about her path" to the Supreme Court, Justice Moyer said during a Thursday interview with The Vindicator. "She's been a judge, a prosecutor and an administrator, and now she wants to go back to being a judge."
But after a meeting with O'Connor, who won a seat on the Supreme Court during last week's election, Justice Moyer is convinced that the outgoing lieutenant governor is capable of handling the job.
"She's a very serious person; she's a no-nonsense person," he said. "I expect she'll be a hard worker."
O'Connor, who last served as a judge nearly eight years ago, is replacing Justice Andrew Douglas, who is retiring at the end of this year because of the court's age limit restriction.
Philosophy
During the campaign, O'Connor said her presence on the Supreme Court would completely change its philosophy from an "activist court to one that believes in judicial restraint and not legislating from the bench." Justice Moyer says the current court is not an activist one.
O'Connor also criticized the current court as anti-business, specifically pointing to its decision to strike down tort reform twice.
Also, opponents of the Supreme Court's school-funding decision supported O'Connor and expect that she would rule that the current system, which relies on property taxes, is constitutional. She has not given her opinions on the school-funding issue.
Despite O'Connor's statements about the court, Justice Moyer said people should be careful in predicting the incoming judge's decisions based on her judicial philosophy.
"She'll have six years to prove herself," Justice Moyer said. "I don't know what her election means in terms of cases. I would not predict."
Justice Moyer wants the current court to resolve the most important cases it has in front of them, including school funding, before Justice Douglas leaves Dec. 31.
"It's our obligation to not leave merit cases beyond that time," he said, adding that he's hopeful the school-funding case, which is 11 years old, will be resolved before Justice Douglas leaves.
Judicial races
As he did after the 2000 Supreme Court race, Justice Moyer is publicly criticizing the negative TV ads from independent groups attacking Supreme Court judicial candidates that aired this year.
"This year's election brought into sharp focus that something has to be done with all the money in the Supreme Court races and the perception created by independent groups in their ads that we don't expect judges to be impartial. It is really alarming."
The justice wants to hold a meeting in January with "all the so-called players" to discuss sweeping reforms to judicial races.
Justice Moyer favors eliminating public elections for Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals judges, with appointments made by the governor based on recommendations from an 18-member bipartisan committee that would review qualifications of candidates.