In last Tuesday’s primary, North Carolina voters chose their candidates for many offices. One of those was the state’s supreme court. Democrats presently hold a tenuous 4-3 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court, and two incumbents are up for reelection in November. Republican Richard Dietz faces Democrat Lucy Inman, and Republican Trey Allen faces Democrat Sam Ervin IV (a family name that should be familiar: His father, Sam Ervin III, was a federal appeals judge on the Fourth Circuit, and his grandfather represented North Carolina in the Senate from 1954 to 1974 and became familiar to national audiences during the Watergate hearings).
The early polling is encouraging, showing Dietz up 45 percent to 39 percent, and Allen up 46 percent to 42 percent. North Carolina is, however, only the tip of the iceberg in judicial races that will determine the fidelity of state courts to the federal and state constitutions as well as court resolution of divisive issues such as voting and election laws and abortion:
The stakes are most transparent in the four states where the partisan balance of their supreme courts is on the line this fall—Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio. But the 2022 cycle could also shift jurisprudence across the country if the fragile balance of power is altered in some state supreme courts. In Arkansas, Montana, and New Mexico, for instance, conservative lawyers are running to push the bench further to the right. In Washington State, justices who have formed a narrow progressive bloc are up for re-election.