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by WILL FOLKS
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One of our very first articles of the new year focused on the multi-faceted, multi-front battle for reform of South Carolina’s court system – which given the way government is structured in the Palmetto State is little more than an appendix of the all-powerful legislative branch of government.
South Carolina is one of only two states in the nation where lawmakers elect judges – and the only state where they simultaneously control the process by which judicial candidates are selected. As we’ve written to the point of getting chronic carpel tunnel, this incestuous arrangement enables institutional graft, erodes economic competitiveness, accommodates violent criminals, re-victimizes crime victims and defies the separation of powers that is so critical to checking government overreach.
It is not a “justice” system… it’s a spoils system.
Sadly, though, that’s what happens when you refuse to change a nineteenth century constitution that clearly doesn’t function in a twenty-first century world – a constitution created for no other reason than to preserve the hegemony of a Democrat plantation class (which has somehow morphed into a “Republican” plantation class over the last few decades).
Labels have changed… but outcomes haven’t. South Carolina is still poor, corrupt and hopelessly behind the curve.
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RELATED | FIVE FOR THE COURT
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While our ongoing crusade for judicial reform has yielded modest reforms to South Carolina’s judicial selection process – and some momentum for additional steps in the coming year – bigger fights over lawsuit abuse have produced no positive results whatsoever.
According to to our sources, don’t expect anything to change on that front anytime soon.
That’s because the lawmakers who led this battle believe they no longer have the institutional backing they need to keep fighting – a fundamental lack of faith that we’re told was aired publicly at a recent meeting of the S.C. Coalition for Lawsuit Reform.
Our audience will recall that last year, the Palmetto State’s trial lobby decisively defeated a major push by S.C. Senate majority leader Shane Massey to enact comprehensive lawsuit reform in the Palmetto State. Having just conducted a successful campaign to install a new, ostensibly more conservative GOP “supermajority” during the previous election cycle, Massey believed he had the votes needed to secure his far-ranging legislation.
He did not. So-called “Republicans” including Tom Fernandez, Jason Elliott, Billy Garrett, Mike Gambrell, Stephen Goldfinch, Carlisle Kennedy, Josh Kimbrell, Matt Leber, Luke Rankin and Everett Stubbs sold him out – and sold the reform movement down the river.
Fernandez made no bones as to why he believed these Republicans voted the way they did, too…
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Sources familiar with the situation told us Massey still feels “abandoned” and “hung out to dry” – not just by the malleable GOP senators whom he helped get elected in 2024, but by several leaders of the reform movement who were less-than-effective in backing his legislation last year.
These say the Republican leader – who has impressed us of late with several principled stands – has had enough, and issued a blunt ultimatum to all involved this week.
Specifically, Massey reportedly told coalition leaders he refused to “fight alone” – or to “fight outgunned,” a reference to the massive disparity in resources that was on display during last year’s showdown between the über-influential trial lawyer lobby and the so-called “business community.”
“He made both his disappointment – and his terms – very clear,” a source who attended the recent coalition meeting told FITSNews.
Massey’s conditional willingness to engage the tort reform fight is just one of the significant problems facing advocates for change. According to our sources, the aforementioned business leaders guiding this issue are “hopelessly divided” on numerous fronts – including operational control of the movement, legislation, strategy and tactics ahead of the upcoming session of the S.C. General Assembly.
The associated political operation is also reportedly a shambles.
“It’s a mess,” one veteran operative familiar with the situation told us. “And it’s going to play directly into the trial lawyers’ hands in 2027.”
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we track the evolution of this debate and other big issues ahead of the coming legislative session in Columbia, S.C.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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1 comment
FITS, your diagnosis of the real problems and your prescribed remedies are all wrong.
To simplify it for you, think of the lottery. Do they keep making it low cost for low gain (for example a ticket for a quarter with a 1 in 10 chance of winning a dollar) or higher cost for higher gain (for example a $5 ticket with a jackpot starting at $40M)?
It is the same with law schools, the graduates of which have only a 50-50 chance of landing a job which requires a law degree.
To keep them coming, the prospect of the rare but news-making huge huge recovery class actions or easy drunken drive cases with millions in recovery from the serving restaurant must be kept alive.
Even “the business community” is not fired up about tort reform because they know the risk of being hit by the rare multi-million verdict is about equal to the risk of being hit by lightening.
So, capping recovery kills the young law students big and unrealistic dreams which keep law schools open and does not do much for businesses, specially small businesses run by men and women whose own children have those law school dreams.
And I previously lectured you enough about the Eighth Amendment. But you need to keep demagoguing the issue as red meat for your “base”; so, I won’t waste my time on it.
I will, however, repeat two crucial thoughts. You can’t fight crime by throwing prisons or the guillotine at it because that is only at the end, meaning after apprehension and conviction. The effective efforts should be at the front end: making people not want to commit crimes ab initio AND making it low risk for them to retreat from the beginning or middle of a crime before the irreversible happens.
Again, to simplify it for you if you make the penalty of murder 400 years (which no one lives that long) but for attempted murder or rape “only” 40 years, prospective murderers or rapists will make sure the victim is killed because that lowers the chances of being caught and convicted. But it the penalty of murder is ties to life-expectancy AND there is a significant “discount” for retreat from possible murder, behavioral sciences tell us the murder rate drops.
Can you make “your base” savor the caviar of real science instead of the red meat of “kill them all”?