A committee of three Student Government senators was appointed last week to evaluate the actions of the Supreme Court, after it made a decision to disqualify Mark Lombardi-Nelson from the presidential election.
Graham Reybitz, Kendel Mott and Russell Heller, each associate justices who agreed with the court’s decision, were issued memos of impeachment by SG Sen. Jozef Gherman on the basis of “willful disregard of statutes.”
Gherman said the court did not follow its guiding documents. The court believes it did.
Reybitz feels he and his colleagues are being tried for their opinions, not their actions. He said there is no reason a person should be tried for his or her opinion, and considers senate’s ability to do so a “horrendous power” and a fault in the SG process.
“If you could back it up with bribery or bias, then sure, go ahead and try me,” he said.
When Richards made his initial request for trial against the Election Rules Commission, the court filed it under appellate jurisdiction, not original. Reybitz said, because of whom the case was filed against, appellate jurisdiction was the only option.
Julie Wong, chief student affairs officer, said otherwise.
In her decision issued on April 18, Wong said the case should have been filed under original jurisdiction from the start, and therefore deemed the appeal null and void. She also accused the court of improperly assessing points.
Alex Johnson, the one dissenting judge, also said the case should have been filed under original jurisdiction in his dissenting opinion. If it were, the case would have been thrown out because candidates do not have the ability to appeal points assessed to other parties.
The court has the power to reverse, reduce or uphold points, but Reybitz said because the ERC threw out the points it originally assessed, there were no points to work with.
According to him, the court could not simply declare a winner because saying Richards won would deny Lombardi-Nelson due process and saying Lombardi-Nelson won would deny Richards due process.
“The case was that the ERC messed up,” he said.
The court used the implicit power of the constitution to overrule the point evaluation dropped by the ERC and assess its own.
“We were basically acting as the ERC,” Reybitz said.
The court held a hearing for Lombardi-Nelson to defend himself on April 5.
Reybitz said they gave Lombardi-Nelson “ample opportunity to argue his case” and because the case was against the ERC, they were not actually obligated to do so.
Plagiarism is not listed as a violation in the ERC’s rules of procedure but the court cited a statute that says, “Any violations that are not specifically outlined can be left up to the Election Rules Commission to be considered a major violation.” Even though this statute asserts power to the ERC, the court used it to assess 20 points for plagiarism.
Reybitz said the court was left to make the decision that would cause the least harm and did so by re-evaluating Lombardi-Nelson’s campaign violations.
When the court is dealing with a gray area that might have multiple interpretations, it must give itself implicit power to make a ruling, Reybitz said.
He feels Johnson dissented because he did not agree with the implicit power the court gave itself.
“The line between right and wrong was blurry. There were things we had to uphold, modify and ignore,” Reybitz said.
He explained that many statutes in the SG constitution are poorly written and contradict themselves. Despite this, the court must “function under the assumption that all guiding documents are correct.”
He also added, “Justices owe their jobs to the people in senate. If there were bias, it’d be in [senate’s] favor.”
