Post & Courier
Jan. 26
End special privileges for S.C. lawyer-legislators and their clients
S.C. Chief Justice Don Beatty couldn’t have come up with a better way to illustrate how easily lawyer-legislators can give their clients an unfair advantage in court if he had set out to do just that.
By restricting that power and then yanking back that restriction the next day, he simultaneously appeared to demonstrate what inappropriate power lawyer-legislators have over our court system – as if we needed another illustration.
Now that the chief’s flip-flop has emboldened critics to speak openly and made the miscarriages of justice that result from the 21-year-old special treatment provision more widely known among the general public and non-lawyers in the Legislature, the question is what, if anything, Justice Beatty and the Legislature are going to do about it.
Hold that thought while we recap what’s been going on in our courts since 2001, when then-Chief Justice Jean Toal issued an order forbidding judges from requiring lawyer-legislators to appear in court during the six months a year the Legislature is generally in session. Her order made an exception for “extraordinary circumstances” where “substantial rights of the parties to the litigation will be defeated or severely abridged by the delay, or where the litigation involves emergency relief and irreparable damage.”
It’s not unreasonable to remove some barriers…
