08/02/2006

Weaver in center of storm on court

BY BILL O'BRIEN

bobrien@record-eagle.com

Weaver

TRAVERSE CITY — There's disorder in the state Supreme Court, and northern Michigan Justice Elizabeth A. Weaver is in the middle of the fray.

Two Supreme Court opinions issued this week, including a public censure order for 86th District Judge Michael Haley, highlighted an increasingly bitter rift between Republican Weaver and the rest of the court's Republican-nominated majority.

The four who comprise a regular voting block — Chief Justice Clifford Taylor and justices Maura Corrigan, Robert Young and Stephen Markman — were named to state court posts by former Gov. John Engler; Weaver was not.

Justices Marilyn Kelly and Michael Cavanagh are Democratic nominees and round out the court.

The chasm between Weaver and her fellow Republicans is unprecedented in recent decades, political observers said. This week's opinions showcase justices' barely concealed contempt for one another.

Weaver, in the Haley opinion, ripped her majority colleagues for allegedly downplaying some of the charges against the Traverse City judge, allegedly for self-protective reasons.

"Members of the majority have recently been accused of their own appearances of impropriety for their participation in various cases," Weaver wrote in the Haley matter. "They have attempted to characterize these accusations as politically and philosophically motivated, but it is alarming that now the majority's apparent solution to their predicament is is to rewrite how the rules that govern the conduct of judges will be applied."

"It is not expected that when the going gets tough, justices who so ardently and frequently claim to be champions of judicial restraint will conveniently change the manner in which the laws governing their own conduct are to be applied."

Blunt response

The Republican majority was equally blunt in a response to Weaver.

"Rather than engage the members of this court on the legal issues relevant to this case, Justice Weaver has abandoned any pretense of persuasion or an appeal to reason and delivered herself of an unwarranted and intentionally vile personal diatribe whose sole purpose is to denounce and injure her colleagues in the majority ... we decline to dignify Justice Weaver's splenetic opinion here by responding further to it," Young wrote.

Such public sniping between justices amazes Lansing political observers.

"I've never seen a split on a court within a party," said Bill Ballenger, who writes the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter and has followed Lansing politics for close to five decades. The court's had several "feisty characters" over the years who didn't always get along, he said, but not at the present level of animosity.

"Honestly, I believe it's more a matter of personalities and political ambitions rather than judicial philosophy," Ballenger said.

A staff member from Weaver's office in Traverse City said Weaver wouldn't comment beyond what was written in her opinions.

Political columnist George Weeks of Glen Haven, a long-time confidant of Weaver, said the rift is the product of numerous disagreements between Weaver and the other Republicans over the years.

"This has been going on a long time, pretty much 'under the robes,' so to speak," Weeks said. Some of it goes back to her two-year stint as the court's chief justice, where she tried to cut spending and make other procedural changes in the court, Weeks said.

"She was a stickler on a lot of things," Weeks said. "She rubbed them the wrong way. She's very independent-minded, and she's just not in the same mold as the majority."

"There's a history of discomfort she has with them — and them with her," he said.

The rift grew when the court replaced Weaver as chief justice after just two years in 2000, when standard court procedure was to name a chief justice for consecutive two-year terms.

"She was defrocked and deposed as chief justice, and I don't think she ever got over it," said Ballenger, who credited current Chief Justice Clifford Taylor for leading the coup against Weaver in favor of Corrigan — who served two terms as top justice from 2001-04.

Current hostilities are in stark contrast to earlier years, when Weaver campaigned with Taylor and ushered him around northern Michigan to introduce him to local media, at service clubs and other events.

At a loss

Some Republicans are at a loss to explain the deteriorating relationship between Weaver, Taylor and the remaining court majority.

"They're both dear friends of mine, and I get along with both of them," Chuck Yob, a longtime Michigan GOP operative, said of Weaver and Taylor.

He hasn't taken sides in the Supreme Court quarrel, but said he doesn't believe it's doing major damage to the party.

"Even in the Republican Party, we sometimes have squabbles — we're not like the sheep following a shepherd," Yob said.

But other party officials are concerned.

"You'd prefer (the rift) not to be there and that they'd work out things internally, but that's not always doable," said Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. "My goal is that hopefully things don't escalate and get out of control."

Ballenger said the split among the court's Republicans has the party "deathly afraid" of losing one seat to create a 4-3 GOP majority, which in effect would make Weaver a decisive swing vote on the court.

Not everyone is bothered by the deep divide between Weaver and her fellow Republicans. Lawyers like Dean Robb of Suttons Bay, who once ran for the Supreme Court as a Democrat, are highly critical of the GOP majority and are glad to see it at least partially fractured.

"It's terrible what's happened to the justice system in this state ... I was cheering Betty Weaver for splitting with them a little bit," Robb said. "Every opinion they write makes things worse for the little guy."

Lansing insiders don't have a clue where the escalating feud is headed. But against a backdrop of large personalities and strong opinions, most observers don't expect it to cool down anytime soon.

"God knows where it's going to go from here," Ballenger said.