Now that J. Michael Eakin has submitted his retirement letter, it is time for the state Supreme Court to move past the latest scandal that enveloped the trouble-prone judicial body.
Even the most optimistic of Pennsylvanians can be forgiven for keeping their fingers crossed rather than relaxing in the belief that better days are ahead. Scandals are nothing new on this court.
Joan Orie Melvin campaigned on the issue of judicial corruption, highlighting the court’s involvement both in a secretive pay raise in 2005 and in Luzerne County, where two judges took millions in bribes for funneling juvenile offenders to two detention centers whether it was warranted or not. By 2013, however, Melvin herself resigned after she was convicted for theft and abuse of office. She was not the first justice to leave under a criminal cloud.
Then there are the raunchy emails.
Mr. Eakin is the second justice to leave the bench because of his involvement in highly inappropriate behavior, exchanging sexist, racist, offensive emails. The first, Seamus P. McCaffery, left office in the fall of 2014.
Mr. Eakin offered a preposterous excuse for his behavior: “Perhaps my demeanor was ‘one of the boys,’ ” he told the Court of Judicial Discipline late last year. “But what I sent was to people who were ‘one of the boys.’ It was in the locker room.”
His suggestion that this was just boys being boys is an insult to grown men across the commonwealth who know better how to behave, particularly in the workplace and especially at the highest levels of government. Mr. Eakin, like Mr. McCaffery and Melvin, was elected to a position that is accorded a certain level of respect, and they all violated that trust.
The next time anyone raises a right hand to take the oath of office for the highest court in Pennsylvania, that individual had better have a complete understanding of what it means to act with integrity and fairness.
First Published: March 18, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
