Jerry Lynch’s political bias makes him a bad choice

Montanans are fortunate to be able to elect the judges who serve in our Montana courts — from the county level all the way up to our Montana Supreme Court.  We get to choose based on who is most qualified and has the best temperament to serve on the bench.  The trade off for that choice is that we expect the candidates running for judicial office to keep out of the political fray to maintain their objectivity.

It’s in this context — of political impartiality — that I have been so disappointed in one Supreme Court candidate, Jerry Lynch for refusing to set his politics aside and by showing a complete lack of judicial temperament.

I have met few people as arrogant as Lynch, and numerous attorneys have told me they would rather have a tooth pulled than appear before him.  Lynch is running for a public servant position, but in his arrogance, he believes the people should serve him.

While his well-deserved reputation for arrogance should be enough to keep him out of any public office, there’s another flaw that’s even worse.

All Montanans deserve a fair hearing. We should expect that the judge has no pre-existing biases in the case. Jerry Lynch has not held himself up to this standard.

On numerous occasions he’s declared how he would rule on a particular issue — like abortion and environmental issues.  These declarations have been made in a highly political manner, hoping to appeal to certain voting groups. By doing so he’s compromised his objectivity as a judge and is a threat to the integrity of our nonpartisan courts.

No one wants to go into a case knowing that the judge has already made up their mind —that’s not how justice is served.

In interviews and speeches, Lynch speaks as if he’s running to be a legislator. He talks about the law he wishes existed, and presumably would create from the bench if he were elected. But as we all know, judges are not elected to create law — they’re on the bench to carefully consider the facts of each individual case, and to interpret the statutes created by our elected lawmakers.

The reason we don’t want activist judges like Jerry Lynch is because it creates chaos. If we allow the law to be ever evolving based on the political biases of the judge hearing a case, then we have no predictability in our legal system. Litigants don’t know what to expect — they don’t know where the boundaries are between legal and illegal.  That type of instability hampers our economy and plays gotcha with well-meaning Montanans.

Jerry Lynch’s expressed preference to be an activist judge is extremely concerning for those of us in the legal profession. Equally concerning is the fact that Lynch has no experience in Montana courts — he’s spent his career as a federal clerk or magistrate judge, focused on federal law. And as you may have guessed, he was an activist who liked to change the law to suit his political agenda during that tenure.

Montanans deserve the most qualified judges possible, and this year we are fortunate that we have a seasoned and experienced candidate for Supreme Court in county attorney Cory Swanson.  Swanson has proven himself to be an elite legal mind and a tough on crime prosecutor.

But most of all, Swanson has pledged time and time again throughout this campaign that he will leave his politics at the door and serve as an impartial judge — not a legislator. Political impartiality should be the key deciding factor in the race for the Montana Supreme Court — and by that test only one candidate passes — Cory Swanson.

Nels Swandal is a retired Montana district court justice. He lives in Wilsall.