New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is determined to make the New Jersey Supreme Court more to his liking and did so by replacing John Wallace, a Democrat and the only African American on the bench, with Anne Patterson, a white Republican
[A] coalition of African-American leaders blasted Gov. Chris Christie’s decision not to re-nominate state Supreme Court Justice John Wallace late last week at the Statehouse.
Christie has long criticized the Supreme Court as too liberal. Wallace was nearing the end of a seven-year term and Christie simply refused to reappoint him even though reappointment had been the practice even when a governor had political differences with a judge.
In fact, this is the first time since 1947 that a New Jersey governor has not reappointed a judge who had completed an initial seven-year term.
