Attorney Richard Renck ’92

Presbyterian College alumnus Richard Renck made the case for a strong and independent judiciary system in the United States at a lecture Tuesday to honor Constitution Day.

Renck, a 1992 graduate of PC, is a practicing attorney in Delaware with more than two dozen years of experience litigating in front of various judges in different courtrooms. In them all, he said, it is important for the public to have faith in a fair judicial system.

That faith, however, is at an all-time low, he said. Trust in the judicial branch at every level – federal, state, and local – has declined precipitously in just the last three years. Restoring trust is paramount to a healthy democracy, Renck said.

“The state of the judiciary affects everybody,” he said. “Some of you in this room might be business majors. A healthy judiciary means the difference between being able to enter into contracts that you know will get enforced fairly by a court if you and the counterparty get crossed up in some way. Some of you might be biology majors and want to be doctors. Having a court system that fairly applies medical malpractice laws and liability is something that’s going to be important to you.

“Art majors, if you create something, you want to protect that. A strong court system will protect the copyright laws and enforce those for you. So, knowing that there are trusted courts that will independently and faithfully apply the law of the land is candidly one of the major foundations for being able to live in a free society.”

Judicial independence is key to faith not only in the legal system but in U.S. democracy, Renck said.

“The framers of the Constitution set up a three-branch system of government – the executive, the legislative, the judicial branch – all three of which are subservient to the Constitution as the primary framework for our system. This was designed as a way to provide a system of checks and balances amongst and around the three independent branches.”

The concept of an independent judiciary is nothing new, Renck added. Ancient Greeks and Romans had some level of judicial independence, as did European philosophers during the Enlightenment that influenced the Constitution’s authors, such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

In the Federalist Papers, leading thinkers like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison lobbied for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by arguing in favor of a strong federal form of government, including a strong and independent judiciary to check the legislative and executive branches of government, Renck said.

U.S. citizens are losing faith in all three branches of government because they believe politics plays too large a role in the courts, he added. People also disagree on how judges should be chosen and how long they should serve. While judges at the federal level are lifetime appointments, judges at the state and local levels serve terms that vary state-to-state and are often elected positions subject to partisan politics.

The Founding Fathers understood that tensions between political parties and the mercurial results of elections should not create wild variations in legal precedence and worked hard to create a system of judicial independence that would keep the courts unbowed by political pressure, Renck said.

One of key causes of today’s attitudes toward the judicial branch is the politicization of the appointment and confirmation process for U.S. Supreme Court justices, Renck said.

“It’s hard not to look at that and see that it has become a very political process,” he said. “I think that this is something that we all need to think about, pulling back from the ledge and figuring out how we make that less political than it has been.”

Renck said the public and the media that informs it should understand that most judges do not make decisions based on their personal political views but on the law. Just because someone does not agree with the decision, it does not mean that a judge is being politically biased, he said.

To restore confidence in the judiciary and the Constitution, citizens must get involved, learn more about civic duty, serve, and vote, Renck said.

“This is the only way we’re going to be able to protect our democracy going forward,” he said.

Attorney Richard Renck ’92 (third from left) with (left to right) Dr. Jerry Slice, professor of economics and business administration; Dr. Suzie Smith, Vance Professor of Economics and Business Administration; and Dr. Erin McAdams, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.