It did, personally I just don’t quite grasp the reasoning.
I think Voyager answered it, in general terms:
I guess this part seems like a stretch to me. But, I will accept it as they seem to have.
The South Dakota proposed amendment is a profoundly bad idea. There are already several means of reining in errant judges and other public officials, as noted upthread. I was not aware of an epidemic of jack-booted state government thugs trampling on the rights of South Dakotans; this amendment has a distinct aroma of the Freemen/survivalist/common-law-courts brand of idiocy. If adopted, the amendment would strongly discourage citizens from public service and seriously erode the independence of South Dakota courts.
I hope it loses, and loses big, so no one tries it elsewhere.
I didn’t get it exactly, but say a judge has to set a payment in a lawsuit. I’d think it is at least possible that he or she would feel that the chance of being sued under this law (and it isn’t quite being sued, I understand) is proportional to the size of the judgement. This is totally new territory, and who knows what would happen?
Random, do jurors have judicial immunity? Would it be possible to sue a jury that rules against you? Since the law directs the grand jury to believe the plaintiff, this would be very hard to defend against. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to serve on a jury if there was a chance of being sued because of it.
Jurors are immune from suits by a disappointed litigant, although that immunity isn’t always called judicial immunity. Although I haven’t researched the issue, I believe that every state recognizes this immunity, although it’s possible that individual states may vary on the extent of the immunity.
Here’s the link to the organization supporting this type of measure generally: Jail4Judges.
Thanks. One of the links on that page let me to a brief that the founder of JAIL filed in a California case.
http://www.jail4judges.org/BransonsBriefs/BransonsPetitionUSSC.htm
It confirmed my opinion that he’s a nutjob serial filer of the type I’ve come across before.
OK, so, suppose this passes and every judge resigns. Then what?
Dunno if South Dakota law provides for special elections for vacant judgeships, or for the Governor to fill vacancies on the bench. Of course, you’d still have to find people willing to serve, which could be a little hard, given this boneheaded amendment.
Just looked up South Dakota law. The Governor would make an appointment to any vacant judgeship from a list of names submitted to him by the Commission on Judicial Qualifications. South Dakota Constn., Art. V, Sec. 7.
This just in (well, the results came in yesterday, November 7, 2006) S.D. Amendment E went down in flames, 89% -11% Link. Thank you, South Dakota, for your votes!
Sweet! Vox populi, vox Dei… at least this time.
Man, I’m impressed with the South Dakota voters…voting down this measure and the anti-abortion measure.
Good for them.
Does anyone who loses a court case ,not believe they got screwed over. It would plug up the system.
Problem is,no organization can police itself. Those that pretend to,like police departments,medical professions, judicial and political develop self serving organizations that cover up rather than clean up .
:eek: 
From here. Why would you put that in your bio?