Grisham's take on jackpot justice

John Grisham, attorney, novelist and native Mississippian, appeared on Bill Moyers Journal program on public TV this weekend.
Grisham covered a variety of topics in a fascinating interview with Moyers, expressing a progressive outlook on fixing the problems of the country in general and the South in particular. His new book is called The Appeal. In it he describes the way some states fill the judicial benches on their courts. Here's a portion from the transcript:

JOHN GRISHAM: It's called THE APPEAL. You'll love it. It's got more politics than anything I've written. It's tons of politics, tons of legal intrigue. It's about — all my books are based, in some degree on something that really happened. There's an element in truth in all these books. This is about the election of a Supreme Court justice in the state of Mississippi.
Thirty some odd states elect their judges, which is a bad system. Because-- if they allow private money. Just like a campaign. Just like the campaign we're watching now for president. You got corporate people throwing money in. You got big individuals. You got, you know, cash coming in to elect a judge who may hear your case. Think about that. You've got a case pending before the court and you want to reshape the structure of the court, well, just to get your guy elected. And that's happened in several states. Big money comes in, take out a bad judge, or an unsympathetic judge. Replace him with someone who may be more friendly to you. And he gets to rule in your case without a conflict.
BILL MOYERS: Is this the story of the corporation that dumps the toxic poisons into the stream. Ruins the community's drinking water?
JOHN GRISHAM: It starts off with a verdict. Chapter one is a verdict where this big chemical company has polluted this small town to the point where you can't even drink the water. It's become a cancer cluster. A lot of people have died. And so there's a big lawsuit. And that's the opening of the book. And then it's all the intrigue about what that company does. Because the guy who owns that company doesn't like the composition of the Supreme Court. And he realizes he can change it. And so--
BILL MOYERS: By buying an election. He can buy the judge.

You betcha. Alabama, Mississippi's neighbor to the east, know all about it. In 2006, two candidates for chief justice of the state Supreme Court went through all most $6 million. That's enough hard-fought campaigning to merit its own novel.