Chief Justice LA Supreme Court Enraged by Allegations

You’ll remember back in March there were rumors the Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Pascal Calogero, was about to resign due to allegations the court’s decisions were being influenced by campaign contributions.

So far, Calogero has not resigned, but yesterday he launched a blistering broadside on Tulane Law School professor Vernon Valentine Palmer and Loyola University business professor John Levendis, whose research prompted the allegations.

Calogero alleged the research relied on flawed data and a flawed methodology. In response, Palmer said

Assuming there are errors, these will not change the gist of the results and the dismal picture they paint of the court.

Palmer said Calogero didn’t dispute the study’s conclusion that justices “continually decide cases involving their own donors without recusing themselves.”

“That right there is the most important part of the study,” he added.

However Calogero attempts to spin this story, even if the justices are innocent, until they routinely recuse themselves from cases involving donors to their campaigns, the air of suspicion will remain and law school professors will continue to investigate the correlation between donations and judgements. There’s an easy way to solve this.