18th House District Democratic PA CleanSweep candidate Harris Martin endorses Professor Ledewitz's judicial reform proposals

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 08/22/2006
Bensalem, PA
Contact 215-208-5264
electmartin@yahoo.com
www.martin.bensalemdemocrats.com

18th House District Democratic PA CleanSweep candidate Harris Martin today announced his support for Duquesne Law School Professor Bruce Ledewitz's "Platform for Reform of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court" (PDF document). Ledewitz is an authority on the Pennsylvania State Constitution and a renowned proponent of judicial reform.

Professor Ledewitz's 15-point judicial reform platform addresses:

Transparency in Court governance,
Acknowledgment of, and deference to, the role of the legislature,
Regularity in Judicial decision-making, and
Strict enforcement of constitutional limits on the process of government.

These reform proposals were described by Harrisburg press corps reporter Allison Hawkes on August 17 in the Bucks County Courier Times and the Times Herald of Norristown. These proposals deserve more widespread attention from the press and support from reform advocates and reform candidates for the legislature.

Ledewitz's reforms would subject our state courts to commonly accepted principles of accessibility to public records and government in the sunshine with regard to meetings of judges with legislators, rule-making, Court committee appointments, and Court administration. These reforms would clearly define the separation of powers between the state judiciary and the state legislature in compliance with our state constitution.

Ledewitz proposes that courts should always issue written opinions when rendering decisions. These reforms present guidelines for more stringent enforcement of the state constitution by the courts in regards to questionable actions by the legislature such as last year's pay raise and unvouchered expenses.

The reforms also propose better compliance with the state constitution's requirement for uniformity of taxation, urges the courts to more clearly define the immunity of state and local officials from lawsuits, urges the courts to properly enforce constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of State government, and urges the court to more strictly enforce the state constitution in regards to state-wide referendum questions on amending the state constitution.

Finally, Ledewitz urges the state courts to abandon their claim of "inherent" judicial power and limit their powers to those provided in or clearly implied by the state or federal constitutions.

According to Martin, "Ledewitz's judicial reforms should be adopted in their entirety. Such judicial reforms would compliment the Reform Coalition's 10-point Roadmap to Reform, the 55 pro-reform House incumbents' 9-point Platform for Reform, and other reforms that I and others have proposed.

I urge all PA CleanSweep candidates and all pro-reform Democratic, Republican, and other candidates for state House and Senate to support these judicial reforms. Once elected, I will immediately work with pro-reform legislators in a bipartisan Reform Caucus to implement all of these reforms."