The Times endorses
For Supreme Court: Madsen, Alsdorf, Sanders

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Three seats are up for election on the Washington Supreme Court, two held by incumbents. Partly because of the recent turnover, we believe the two incumbents should be returned and that the open seat should be filled by a justice who will add stability.

The Times endorses incumbents Barbara Madsen and Richard Sanders, and for the open seat, Robert Alsdorf. Open seats naturally attract good candidates, and the seat of retiring Faith Ireland attracted four of them: Maureen Hart, a longtime attorney on the attorney general's staff; Jim Johnson, formerly of that staff and lately an Olympia attorney specializing in electoral and constitutional issues; Mary Kay Becker of the Washington Court of Appeals; and Alsdorf, a judge of the King County Superior Court.

This page endorsed Johnson two years ago on his knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, the state constitution. We still like this plainspoken conservative populist who has raised the most money of any candidate. But we also like Becker, formerly a Democratic legislator appointed to the Court of Appeals a decade ago by Gov. Mike Lowry. She is well-spoken and highly regarded.

And then there is Alsdorf. He is best known for striking down Initiative 695, Tim Eyman's first $30 car-tabs measure. The opinion was brilliantly written and upheld by higher courts. But Alsdorf won't discuss this case or any other, or his philosophy in general. In a law-review article he argued: "Judges should respect the sound of silence and not engage in public substantive speech outside the courtroom."

Why support Alsdorf? Because it seems that almost every lawyer on the street supports him. Big ones and little ones, and ones of all shades of political opinion. Alsdorf is idolized in King County, and for qualities the high court needs: fairness and a sense of legal predictability and stability.

The next race pits Barbara Madsen, a justice with 12 years on the Supreme Court, against Terry Lukens, a smart and highly-regarded judge of the King County Superior Court. Lukens, who has raised more money than Madsen and has the prosecutors behind him, targets her for two decisions she wrote.

One changed state felony-murder law and the other overturned a law against apportionment of tort liability. The accusation is that these were "legislating from the bench" and created chaos. We read her opinion in the felony-murder case and agreed with it. Her tort-liability ruling tends to protect defendants from unreasonable injury claims. We suspect the claims of "chaos" are overstated and offered by partisans.

The final choice is for Justice Richard Sanders, a libertarian who tends to side with the individual against the state. We often disagree with Sanders, as when he voted to throw out the Seattle Schools' use of race in school admissions and when he argued that the Mariners' stadium was a private use rather than a public use. Other times we cheer him, as when he dissented in a ruling that upheld Sound Transit's right to change the light-rail plan without consulting voters.

Sanders writes clear and compelling opinions that reach directly to the state constitution and its history. He's an iconoclast who sometimes seems to enjoy being a dissenter. If there were too many like him, the court might not function at all. Six years ago we said that the court "may not need nine Richard Sanders, but it certainly needs one." Still true.