How Christie stumbled into an impasse
Christie's trying to stack the NJ Supreme Court with conservative judges.
CHRIS CHRISTIE thought he knew what he was doing when he refused to nominate state Supreme Court Justice John E. Wallace Jr. for a second term. Confirmation would have given Wallace tenure until his mandatory retirement just two years later.
The dismissal was announced in May 2010, soon after the new governor took office. Wallace was the second black to be appointed to the court, and the only one then serving. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a Democrat, with years of experience as a trial and appellate judge, he was a competent, politically moderate justice.
Christie, pressed to defend his decision, would not or could not find fault with any of the decisions Wallace had written. Instead, the governor repeated his campaign pledge to do something about the court as a whole, which he had criticized as too liberal, too activist. The only way to do that, he said, was by appointment of new justices, and the sooner, the better.
It was the first time since the current state Constitution was adopted in 1947 that a governor had denied a second term to a sitting justice, and the decision shocked the legal establishment, particularly the Supreme Court, and most particularly the unfortunate John Wallace. But there was no way for him to express his chagrin. That would defy protocol, which, of course, was what Christie had just done.
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http://www.northjersey.com/columnists/ahearn/ahearn_061312.html
