Soros vs. American courts

[Geee]

Washington Times:

Recently, the ultra-left-wing magazine the American Prospect released a “special report” called “Justice for Sale” on what it considers “threats” to America’s state courts. But rather than examining the true threats to our judiciary - activist judges, tort-abusing trial lawyers and the wholesale invention of new “rights” our nation’s Founders never imagined - the report offers a road map of the left’s campaign to seize control of our courts, if you recognize the signposts.

The first clue comes on the report’s inside cover, where we learn that the project was financed through the “generous support” of the Open Society Foundations, the political arm of liberal moneybags George Soros. Last year, the organization I lead, the American Justice Partnership, released a study finding that Open Society has spent more than $45 million during the past decade to fundamentally shift the direction of America’s courts.

According to our research, the American Prospect itself raked in approximately $1.3 million over the past decade or so from Open Society over and above whatever it got paid to produce the latest special report. The authors of the report also recognize the “valuable input” of Lambda Legal and its Fair Courts Project. Both Lambda Legal generally and its Fair Courts Project specifically are Open Society beneficiaries to the tune of more than $1 million between 2003 and 2009. In fact, in 2009 alone, Soros foundations approved $380,000 to support the Fair Courts Project. The other acknowledged sponsor, a group called Demos and its predecessor, the National Voting Rights Institute, have received more than $3 million in Open Society funding over the past decade.

One of the report’s biggest complaints is that conservative groups such as the American Justice Partnership and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been too effective in supporting rule-of-law judges in judicial elections. To buttress this claim, the report quotes four purportedly nonpartisan sources but never mentions that all of them are bankrolled by Open Society, including Justice at Stake (more than $3.1 million over the past decade), the Brennan Center for Justice ($12.3 million), the National Institute for Money in State Politics ($2.3 million) and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign ($150,000).