Writing Checks or Righting Wrongs: Election Funding and the Tort Decisions of the Ohio Supreme Court
Abstract
This paper will try to address the court's present and future course in tort law, with particular focus on products liability, malpractice, and employer tort liability. These are the most intriguing segments of modern tort law in Ohio. The paper concludes that stare decisis and the precedential accretion of the common law no longer seem to matter to the Ohio Supreme Court. Instead, the cacophony of a fractured court has imperiled predictability and imperiled the court's national reputation. Instead, the topic of a prospective justice's view of the tort system is unfortunately an early and frequent conversation in recruitment, selection, and funding of the candidates for the court. While tort law justice is not for sale in Ohio, its trends can be heavily influenced by the pervasive expense structure of supreme court electoral politics. Contrary to what television attack ads have claimed, justices' individual votes are not for sale, but their policy outcomes can perhaps be more closely predicted as a result of the forces that control campaign finance in Ohio judicial elections.
Recommended Citation
James T. O'Reilly,
Writing Checks or Righting Wrongs: Election Funding and the Tort Decisions of the Ohio Supreme Court,
51 Clev. St. L. Rev.
643
(2004)
available at https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevstlrev/vol51/iss3/14
Comments
Symposium: The Ohio Constitution - Then and Now: An Examination of the Law and History of the Ohio Constitution on the Occasion of Its Bicentennial