The Times recommends re-election of Richard Sanders to the state Supreme Court

JUSTICE Richard Sanders should be re-elected to the Washington Supreme Court. The court's most fundamental job is to push back against the other two branches of government — the executive and the legislative — when they step on the rights of the people. No member of the court does that more consistently, and with greater gusto, than Sanders.

It takes a certain ego to do this, and ego may have other effects. Sanders can be cavalier about the rules of his trade. A judicial panel said he violated the appearance of fairness (but not fairness itself) in a visit to prisoners at McNeil Island in 2003.

Clearly he spoke injudiciously in 2008, when he stood up in an audience and called U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey a "tyrant" to his face. This page hammered him in 2009 for ruling in a public-records case that could have affected a case of his own by increasing the award to his lawyer.

We do not take back our criticism. People who think these are the most important things can vote for Sanders' leading opponent, attorney Charlie Wiggins, who is fully qualified to be on the court.

We are staying with Sanders because we so often relish his strong and well-reasoned opinions. Begin with open government — the scope of the state's public-disclosure laws. Access to documents for everything is something we in the newspaper business champion. In protecting that right, Sanders is as solid as a mountain — and many of his colleagues are not.

On freedom of the press and of speech, Sanders is equally solid. On religious freedom, the same. On the rights of property owners, the same. Gun rights, the same. The rights of the accused, the same. The people's rights of initiative and referendum, the same.

Sanders does not always push back against government. He did not vote to invalidate state government's ban of gay marriage. But of nine justices, Sanders is more often the one standing up and yelling "No" at some rotten thing a political agency is doing to someone.

Wiggins would do this some of the time. Sanders specializes in it — and the people need him on the Washington Supreme Court.