Illinois Supreme Court no stranger to politics

SPRINGFIELD — The judges who will decide whether Rahm Emanuel gets to run for Chicago mayor are no strangers to politics.

The seven members of the Illinois Supreme Court are elected to their posts in contests that can be vicious and expensive. Some of the justices have long-standing ties to political organizations.

Yet once they're elected, the four Democrats and three Republicans on Illinois' highest court are supposed to put aside politics and focus solely on the law.

Whether they can actually do that is a key question, particularly for Justice Anne Burke, wife of powerful Chicago alderman Ed Burke. Her husband supports an Emanuel rival in the mayor's race, raising the issue of whether she should recuse herself from this case.

The state's highest court has a reputation for treading carefully, and many legal observers say they doubt that politics will come directly into play in a ruling on Emanuel, who was kicked off the ballot on Monday by a 2-1 appellate court ruling that found the former top aide to President Barack Obama did not meet residency requirements to run for mayor.

"I'd say this is a pretty centrist, middle-of-the-road court," said Christopher Keleher, an appellate litigation attorney in Chicago. "The justices aren't seen as ideologues."

Adam Lasker, a Chicago-based election attorney, agreed.

"I haven't ever heard people complaining that this court votes along party lines," he said. "The impression is that this court's pretty darn good."

For a long list of reasons, however, this is no ordinary case.

The lower court's 25-page ruling that found Emanuel should be thrown off the ballot was, Lasker said, so thorough that the Supreme Court might otherwise have refused to hear it at all. But the attention the case has gotten and the desire to clarify the issue may have convinced the court to get involved.

Emanuel has asked the court to overturn the lower ruling that pulled his name off the ballot because he had not lived in the city for a year. His attorneys called the appellate court decision "squarely inconsistent" with previous rulings on the issue.

The justices have not given a specific time frame, though they agreed to expedite the case. They planned to review legal briefs and would not hold oral arguments, a sign the court likely will move quickly to decide the case.

With a national spotlight shining on the case and with so much at stake, there is more scrutiny than ever before on possible biases of individual judges.

As a rule, justices could choose to recuse themselves when they have a direct conflict of interest or if there's the appearance of a conflict, Keleher said.

"But in Illinois, so many judges know everybody and their brother, so usually they recuse themselves only when family member or a close friends is an actual litigant," he said.

Anne Burke has a reputation as a good, impartial judge, said Ann Lousin, a professor at John Marshall Law School, and so there won't be the expectation she step back on this case. Messages seeking comment were left for both Anne Burke and her husband.

"She might indeed recuse herself," Lousin said. "But I think that as long her husband isn't officially part of another campaign and just a supporter, I don't think she should have to."

The Illinois Supreme Court's reputation for caution may not bode well for Emanuel.

Lasker said he believes that in order for the justices to side with Emanuel they would have to set a new precedent on a central legal issue. They would have to find that the requirements for running for office and the less stringent requirements for voting can be mixed to together, he said.

It's possible the justices could carve out an exception in the law to accommodate Emanuel leaving Chicago to serve as White House chief of staff, but that would be a hard-to-support decision, Lasker said.

With early voting expected to start next week in Chicago, the justice will have to arrive at a decision within a matter of just a few days — breakneck speed compared to the months they usually take to chew on big legal issues.

Judges often reach the Supreme Court by being appointed to fill vacancies. The justices already on the court do the appointing. People also can be elected to the court.

Illinois Supreme Court races have grown more expensive and hard-hitting in recent years.

A 2004 race for an open seat saw the two candidates spend a combined $9 million, breaking national records for judicial races. And last year, a retention race by Justice Thomas Kilbride — meaning voters were simply deciding whether he should stay on the court — turned into a multi-million dollar battle between interest groups.

While Illinois Supreme Court justices are elected in partisan races, the Emanuel case wouldn't seem to divide along party lines.

The Chicago mayoral race is essentially a Democratic contest, so Republicans on the court would have no particular stake in the outcome. And the Democrats on the court could have links to multiple mayoral candidates or to none at all.