High court delays hearings

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court scrapped this year’s final round of oral arguments because of impending turnover in three of its seven seats, officials said Tuesday.

The hearings, which had been slated to open in Harrisburg on Tuesday, were postponed until 2008 because only four of the seven justices could take part in the eventual decisions on those cases, said Stuart Ditzen, spokesman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. Court rules stipulate that only justices who are present for oral arguments may participate in the final decision.

“The court felt that would be unfair ... to the parties in these cases,” Ditzen said.

Two of the current members are temporary appointees who will be replaced in January by Seamus McCaffery and Debra Todd, two Superior Court judges who won the Nov. 6 election. Also, Chief Justice Ralph Cappy plans to step down at the end of the year, creating a vacancy that a gubernatorial appointee will fill on an interim basis until voters elect a full-time successor in 2009.

While parties involved in the cases were notified of the cancellation when it occurred in early November, the public received no advance notice — largely because, to “the memory of anyone currently on the court,” it has not previously faced such a large turnover, Ditzen said.

It is “something we’ve not encountered before,” he said, adding that public notification is “something to consider for the future.”

Because it is the state’s highest court, the Supreme Court’s rulings can affect Pennsylvanians’ everyday lives and business endeavors.

Among the 14 cases that had been scheduled for oral arguments this week was a challenge of Gov. Ed Rendell’s line-item veto authority by Republican leaders in the Legislature. A Commonwealth Court panel upheld Rendell’s vetoes of several items in the 2005-06 state budget, including restrictions on funding for abortion-related counseling for low-income women.

Parties in the affected cases were given the option of rescheduling their oral arguments for the court’s March 2008 session in Pittsburgh or waiting until the justices next convene in Harrisburg in May, Ditzen said.