Three of the state's nine Supreme Court positions will be up for election next year.

Ho hum? Don't believe it.

In the past five years, the once-sleepy races for state Supreme Court and attorney general seats across the country have become front lines in wars over tort liability and social issues, such as abortion. Just look at the debate surrounding U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Don't think for a minute Washington's high-court races will be left out of the fray.

Exhibit A: Tort reform is a key part of a state ballot initiative on this November's ballot and an element of another one. Either or both, if passed, might be challenged.

Exhibit B: Remember what Republican Dino Rossi, who barely lost the race for governor after tortured months of recounts, said when he halted his efforts to overturn the razor-tight election of his opponent: "With today's decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest."

Exhibit C: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's puppet-string interference in last year's state attorney general race. The chamber's Institute for Legal Reform targeted Democrat Deborah Senn with a whopping $1.5 million in negative TV ads in the primary — but nobody knew that until two days before the election. Under commission pressure, the ad-buyer, Voters Education Committee, disclosed belatedly its sole contributor was the Institute for Legal Reform.

The Public Disclosure Commission ruled, and a Superior Court judge agreed, that Voter Education Committee violated the state's law requiring disclosure of campaign contributors. But the committee is only a front organization and the real culprits might escape penalties.

That's one reason retired state Supreme Court Justice Robert Utter is going after the bigger fish. He has filed a complaint with the PDC to help beat back the sneaky political maneuverings of special-interest groups seeking to influence the judiciary and fan citizen cynicism about the courts.

Joining him in the complaint are Joaquin Avila, a Seattle University School of Law assistant professor, and Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.,-based consumer-advocacy organization.

They are asking the commission to find that Institute for Legal Reform is an out-of-state political committee under Washington law and require it to disclose the names of Washington residents or businesses that made contributions of more than $25.

Utter didn't vote for Senn, who won the primary then lost the general election to Republican Rob McKenna. But he's concerned about a larger principle, what he sees as a "direct threat" to the political process through murky influence of big-monied groups.

Utter, who served on the state's high court for 23 years, sees firsthand how fragile justice can be. He spends several weeks a year in Prague, Czech Republic, training judges from developing court systems. Last spring, he taught classes to 50 judges from Iraq; in November, he'll teach judges from Kyrgystan.

"In every country, no matter how corrupt the system, you can find people who are very upstanding and have wishes for the best judiciary," says Utter. He teaches classes in judicial ethics, which include discussions about avoiding the appearance of conflicts of interest.

That will get harder for justices in Washington state, if things go like they have in Ohio, Illinois and West Virginia. But some states are taking charge. North Carolina last year implemented a public-financing campaign for judicial races.

Locally, the King County Bar Association is hosting a Washington Summit on Judicial Selection and Judicial Independence in November. Sponsors include bar associations and law schools from around the state but also the Association of Washington Business.

I'm rooting for this conversation to gain political traction with the Legislature, whose members are also subject to the influence of political contributions.

In Washington, we must do better in the interest of fairness and justice.

Kate Riley's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com