Spitzer v. Lopez Torres

The New York Sun reports:

Not since a kosher poulterer named Joseph Schechter went to the Supreme Court and overturned the New Deal have New Yorkers stood before our nation's highest court with as much at stake for our city and country as in the case we cite as Spitzer v. Lopez Torres. This is the lawsuit in which the state Board of Elections, various political officials, and Mr. Spitzer in his capacity as attorney general of New York are seeking to overturn a lower-court order that New York nominate judges for elective office by holding open primaries. The order was won in lower courts by Margarita Lopez Torres after she was shut out in her quest for a state Supreme Court judgeship by the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine; she is now a surrogate judge. Judge Lopez Torres won the first round of appeals before the riders of the Second United States Circuit. Mr. Spitzer and other opponents of Judge Lopez Torres' reforms have just gained a hearing before the nation's top court.

Judges have always been part of the political system.