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We could make the same point without picking on the Japanese. Think about the system that many states use to select their judges: contested elections. Certainly one of the dumbest of the Progressives’ (and President Jackson before them) ideas, this system has now spiraled into the most extreme example of campaign cash weakening the public’s trust of a crucial arm of government. In the 2008 cycles, state supreme court candidates from across the nation raised $45.6 million, seven times the amount raised in the 1990 cycle.5 This money yields “unprecedented pressure from interest groups [on judges] to make decisions that are based on politics,”6 not law, as former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writes. (Remember, O’Connor is no commie: appointed by Ronald Reagan, she was one of the most important conservative justices on the Rehnquist Court.) With “so much money go[ing] into influencing the outcome of a judicial election,” she continues, “it is hard to have faith that we are selecting judges who are fair and impartial.”7

And indeed, we don’t “have faith.” In a survey conducted in 2002, 76 percent of Americans said they thought “campaign contributions influence judicial decisions.”8 Seventy percent of surveyed judges expressed concern that “in some states, nearly half of all supreme court cases involve someone who has given money to one or more of the judges hearing the case.”9 Indeed, almost half (46 percent) of the state court judges surveyed in that 2002 survey said they believe “contributions have at least a little influence.”10 Seventy-nine percent of Texas attorneys believe that “campaign contributions significantly influence a judge’s decision.”11 That number in particular makes sense to me: one of my students reported on a study he had conducted that included one Texas judge who begins each hearing by asking the lawyers to identify their firm, and then, in front of everyone present, opens his contribution book to check whether that firm had contributed to his reelection.12

The suspicions of 76 percent of Americans, 70 percent of surveyed judges, 46 percent of state judges, and 79 percent of Texas attorneys are borne out by the empirical studies of judicial voting behavior and contributions. Professor Stephen Ware, for example, studied Alabama supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1999 and found “the remarkably close correlation between a justice’s votes on arbitration cases and his or her source of campaign funds.”13 A 2006 study by New York Times reporters Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts found that over a twelve-year period, Ohio justices voted in favor of their contributors more than 70 percent of the time, with one justice voting with his contributors 91 percent of the time.14 One example from Louisiana is particularly amazing:

Justice John L. Weimer, for instance, was slightly pro-defendant in cases where neither side had given him contributions, voting for plaintiffs 47 percent of the time. But in cases where he received money from the defense side (or more money from the defense when both sides gave money), he voted for the plaintiffs only 25 percent of the time. In cases where the money from the plaintiffs’ side dominated, on the other hand, he voted for the plaintiffs 90 percent of the time.15

“That’s quite a swing,” note the reporters. Yeah. No kidding.

In both the Japanese and the American cases of tarnished judicial independence, the system that queers independence is a system of corruption. Like the compass that deviates because of an interfering magnetic field, the influence of the government (Japan), or the influence of campaign funders (state courts in America), corrupts the independence the judiciary intends. It weakens the fairness of that system. It weakens public trust.

This is dependence corruption, and as applied to Congress, the concept should be obvious: As with every other branch of our government, the Framers intended Congress to be “independent.” But as with the judiciary, “independent” didn