toledoblade.com --

In an ideal world, the state's highest court would consider the difficult cases that come before it, deliberate the merits of each case based on the law, and rule accordingly, without regard for the personal or political views of the justices.

Unfortunately, in the cloistered world in which the Ohio Supreme Court holds forth, it doesn't work that way.

The bold line that is supposed to separate the legislative and judicial branches of state government has become increasingly blurred with each passing year as the court's 4-3 philosophical majority - we've come to describe them as the Gang of Four - sees itself as a super-legislature.

The Gang of Four - Justices Andy Douglas, Alice Resnick, Francis Sweeney, and Paul Pfeifer - threw Ohio school funding into crisis in 1997 with its infamous decision in DeRolph vs. Ohio, a mess that hasn't been cleaned up to this day. In 1999 the activist court tossed Ohio's auto insurance industry for a loop with an absurd extension of employer liability costs in what has become known as the Ponzer case.

And the same majority refused to permit reasonable restrictions on frivolous lawsuits and extravagant jury awards. This merry band's reluctance to accept the legislature's move toward tort reform kept the trial lawyers happy but nobody else. Ohio thus became only the second state (after Illinois) to invalidate in a single vote a tort reform initiative enacted by the legislature.

Ohioans who've been dismayed by the shenanigans of this quartet have a special opportunity - and indeed an obligation - to do something about it on Nov. 5.

That's because Justice Douglas, once a Toledoan, and the ideological leader of the Gang of Four, faces mandatory retirement from the court after 18 years. Also at stake is the seat of incumbent Justice Evelyn Stratton.

Ohio's best chance to return the court to its proper interpretive role is to re-elect Justice Stratton and to choose Maureen O'Connor for the open seat to be vacated by Mr. Douglas.

Ms. Stratton has not been the court's most outspoken member, at least not statewide, partly because it is not her style and partly because she so often finds herself in the minority. But by most accounts she has been an earnest and effective justice, one who appreciates the court's function and role.

Of course, for Ohioans to reject the politicized Gang of Four majority, they must not only keep Justice Stratton but replace Mr. Douglas with Ms. O'Connor.

She has been an extremely busy lieutenant governor for Gov. Bob Taft, overseeing public safety and homeland security. She has been the first lieutenant governor, in fact, to have cabinet rank. Her two years as a common pleas judge and eight years as a probate court magistrate more than match her opponent's experience handling traffic cases in a Hamilton County municipal court, and she is determined to help return the court to its traditional and prescribed role.

We need to note that the presence of big money and special interest influence has once again tainted Supreme Court races in this state. The O'Connor-Tim Black race is quite likely to become, before it is over, the most expensive non-gubernatorial campaign in the state's history.

Both Judge Black, a municipal court judge from Cincinnati, and Janet Burnside, a common pleas judge in Cuyahoga County who's opposing Justice Stratton, are enjoying substantial backing from organized labor and the trial lawyers, who certainly consider tort reform their worst nightmare.

If either of them wins, the Gang of Four endures.

The bottom line is simple: this is an Ohio Supreme Court that does not command respect, not among the justices' peers around the country, not by true professionals in the practice of law, and not by the citizens of Ohio, although we anticipate we will hear from lawyers who will insist that their respect is genuine even though the Supreme Court oversees the legal profession in this state.

The Gang of Four has compromised and tainted the court by making a mockery of constitutional interpretation; their opinions do not read like they were written by trained legal professionals.

They offer up their pronouncements with pretentious thinking that is undistinguished and so devoid of legal reasoning that it would never be validated by prominent legal minds elsewhere. Maybe Toledo bears a measure of responsibility here, since two of the four are, or were, Toledoans.

It's possible that none of the justices could win appointment to the United States Supreme Court, but that is especially true of the Gang of Four.

The people of Ohio, in good faith, elected a legislature and a governor to make laws and govern. This court has frustrated the people's intent.

Ohioans can resign themselves to a political circus without end, or they can seize the opportunity to lift this court above what it has become in recent years.

They can accomplish the latter, and restore at least a modicum of respect to Ohio's highest court, by reelecting Justice Evelyn Stratton and electing Maureen O'Connor to the open seat.

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