If John Jay Hoffman is confirmed as an associate justice to replace Lee A. Solomon, one particular category of New Jerseyans will be left without representation on the state’s top court: politicians.
Solomon’s retirement on August 17 would leave the seven-member Supreme Court without anyone who has run for public office or held a top political party position.
A throwback to the original State Supreme Court after the ratification of the 1947 New Jersey Constitution, Solomon is the justice with the strongest political resume: he started as a councilman in Haddon Heights, won a race for Camden County freeholder as a Republican, won a State Assembly seat in a 1992 special election convention in the 6th district, and ran for Congress against Rep. Rob Andrews later that year.
In 1995, Solomon lost his Assembly seat by 1,618 votes to Democrat Louis Greenwald (D-Voorhees), the current majority leader.
He later served as Camden County prosecutor and as a Superior Court Judge before then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie hired him as the Deputy U.S. Attorney in charge of the South Jersey office – a post Solomon’s current colleague, Fabiana Pierre-Louis, later held. As governor, Christie appointed Solomon to serve as a commissioner of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities before returning him to the bench in 2011.
All seven new justices named by Gov. Aldred E. Driscoll in 1947 were overtly political, including the first chief justice, Arthur Vanderbilt. He had a strong resume as a former American Bar Association President and Dean of New York University Law School and had led a reform movement in Essex County GOP politics that made him the county GOP leader during periods his Republicans controlled county government. Vanderbilt was the architect of the judiciary component of the 1947 Constitutional Convention that made New Jersey’s chief justice the most constitutionally powerful in the nation.
The power of the unelected chief justice, who gets a tenured seat after seven years until age 70, stems from an old-school, Jersey-style political deal between two New Jerseyans who intensely disliked each other.
Arthur Vanderbilt had been feuding with Driscoll just as delegates were preparing to approve the new State Constitution. Driscoll wanted a powerful executive branch, and Vanderbilt wanted to be chief justice.
Vanderbilt controlled a large and pivotal block of votes in North Jersey. Pre-1947, New Jersey governors served for three years and were term-limited; Driscoll wanted a second term.
As a result, Essex delegates, and others, supported Driscoll’s push for a constitutionally strong governor, and in turn, Vanderbilt, a judicial reform advocate, wrote the job description of the chief justice with himself in mind.
After the new State Constitution was ratified, Driscoll kept his word and nominated Vanderbilt as the first chief justice of the newly constituted top court.
The first six associate justices had heavy political resumes:
* Henry Ackerson, Jr. (D-Keyport) served as Democratic State Senator from Monmouth County, as counsel to the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders, and as municipal attorney to several towns in Monmouth and Middlesex Counties. He spent 24 years as a circuit court judge and five years on the Court of Errors and Appeals.
*Albert Burling (R-Pennsauken) had been a Republican State Senator from Camden County before becoming a circuit court judge in 1942 and a Supreme Court Justice in 1947.
* Clarence Case (R-Somerville) spent eleven years as a Republican State Senator from Somerset County and was Senate President in 1920. He spent one week as acting governor in 1920 and had been the Chief Justice of the old Supreme Court before New Jersey’s new State Constitution was approved. Case’s nephew, Clifford P. Case, served in the U.S. Senate for 24 years.
* Harry Heher had served as Mercer County Democratic Chairman from 1915 to 1922 and as Democratic State Chairman from 1922 to 1932 and became an associate justice of the top court in 1933.
* A. Dayton Oliphant (R-Princeton) was a Republican assemblyman and the Mercer County Prosecutor before becoming being named to the circuit court in 1927 and to the Supreme Court in 1946.
* William Wachenfeld a former Essex County Democratic Chairman, won fame when he prosecuted mobster Dutch Schultz on murder charges. He spent 11 years as the Essex County Prosecutor but lost two State Senate bids. He had been named to the Supreme Court in 1946. (Democratic bosses offered Wachenfeld the Democratic nomination for governor in 1949 and 1953, but he declined both times.)
Additional justices with political ties included: former Senate President Hayden Proctor (R-Neptune); former South Orange Village Trustee John Francis, a former Democratic congressional and Assembly candidate; Vincent Haneman, a former assemblyman and Brigantine mayor who was a political ally of State Sen. Frank “Hap” Farley, the Atlantic County political boss; former Passaic Mayor Morris Pashman; former Gov. Richard Hughes; former Assemblyman Robert Wilentz; former Red Bank Mayor Daniel O’Hern; Gary Stein, a former Paramus GOP mayoral candidate; and former Republican State Committee Executive Director Peter Verniero. State Sen. Stephen Wiley (D-Morris Township) had been named to the Supreme Court and confirmed by the State Senate but never took office after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled him ineligible because he’d voted for a judicial pay raise.
Solomon’s nomination to the Supreme Court came as a compromise between Gov. Chris Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney in 2014.
Christie became the first governor in history to refuse the reappointment of a sitting justice – he did it twice – and the first to see a Supreme Court nomination be rejected by the State Senate – that happened four times.
Instead, he picked Anne Patterson, a 52-year-old Republican lawyer from Morris County. While Patterson was white, the move would create a court that had more women than men – the fifth state in the nation to achieve that.
Christie, already eyeing a larger political arena, viewed the court as too liberal and wanted to change its ideology.
Had Christie renominated Wallace, the seat would have come up again in March 2012 when the Associate Justice reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.
Senate President Steve Sweeney and other Democrats cried foul, claiming that Christie was defying a tradition: governors didn’t dump justices because they disagreed with their decisions.
As a result, Sweeney flexed the power of the Senate and said he would not hold confirmation hearings for the seat until after the date Wallace would have aged out.
At the start of 2011, Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto announced that he would not seek reappointment to the bench when his initial seven-year term expired on August 31.
Rivera-Soto, the first Hispanic to serve on the state’s highest court, got in trouble in 2007 when the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct filed an ethics complaint alleging that he abused his post when contacting local officials about an incident involving a family member at a local school. Rivera-Soto had threatened school officials that he would file a criminal complaint against them if they failed to act and later called the Haddonfield police chief to push for a criminal complaint against a student at the school.
He also called the judge hearing the complaint, and the county prosecutor.
Rivera was later censured by the court for his actions.
Christie later pulled the nomination of Patterson for Wallace’s seat and renominated her for the one Soto was vacating. Sweeney then allowed the Senate to consider and confirm Patterson, sixteen months after her original appointment. She took her seat on September 1, 2011.
Another seat came up in March 2012 when Associate Justice Virginia Long turned 70.
With two vacancies, Christie announced the nomination of Brue Harris and Phil Kwon to replace Wallace and Long.
Harris, the Republican mayor of Chatham Borough, was black and would have become the state’s first openly gay justice. Kwon, who had worked for Christie as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and then as an Assistant Attorney General, would have become the first Asian American on the Supreme Court.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, by a 7-6 vote, rejected Kwon’s nomination following questions over legal and financial issues involving a family business in New York.
Democrats accused Christie of changing the partisan balance of the court, suggesting that Kwon had been a Republican before registering as an independent. Sweeney was angered by the lack of South Jersey nominees.
On May 31, the Judiciary panel rejected Harris, by a vote of 7-6, saying he lacked courtroom experience.
Christie suggested that the rejections were retaliatory after he pushed pension and benefit reform through the legislature.
In December 2012, Christie announced the nominations of Superior Court Judge David Bauman and Board of Public Utilities President Robert Hanna to replace Wallace and Long.
Bauman, a Republican, was born in Japan and Christie said his nomination represented diversity on the court. Hanna, an unaffiliated voter, worked for Christie as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Sweeney refused to advance Bauman and Hanna through the Senate confirmation process.
Associate Justice Helen Hoens, a Republican named by Corine, was up for reappointment for a tenured seat in 2013 after completing her seven-year term on the Supreme Court.
Hoens appeared to be campaigning to save her job when some of her votes on the court moved a little to the right, but Christie decided not to renominate her.
Christie claimed he wanted to prevent Hoens from being embarrassed by the Senate rejecting a sitting justice, but in reality, he didn’t want her back.
Something that made that even more uncomfortable: Hoens’ husband, former Star-Ledger judiciary reporter Robert Schwaneberg, was on Christie’s staff.
Instead, Christie nominated Fernandez-Vina, the Camden County assignment judge and a Republican, to replace Hoens.
Sweeney accepted Fernandez-Vina, known as Fuzzy, and his nomination sailed through the State Senate.
Christie’s appointment of Fernandez-Vina increased Hispanic representation on the Supreme Court by one to one. It also restored South Jersey two seats.
Fernandez-Vina comes up for reappointment in late 2020 and Gov. Phil Murphy has hinted that he intends to continue the tradition of keeping sitting justices. He turns 70 in 2022, and Murphy will get a chance to name his replacement if he wins re-election to a second term.
By 2014, Christie appeared to acknowledge that Bauman and Hanna would never make it to the Supreme Court. He nominated Hanna for a Superior Court judgeship instead.
In a deal with Sweeney, Christie nominated Solomon, the Camden County assignment judge, to fill Long’s seat on the Supreme Court.
Solomon was confirmed by the Senate and took office 27 months after Long’s retirement.
Wallace’s seat remained vacant for six years until Christie and Sweeney finally struck a deal in 2016.
Christie withdrew Bauman, a Republican, and instead nominated Walter Timpone, a 66-year-old Democrat with ties to both parties.
Timpone had served as a federal prosecutor and as a commissioner of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.