Inquirer Editorial: Supreme Court justice needs to step aside

Scandal threatens to engulf Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, as she has been told she is a target of a grand jury probe investigating whether state workers illegally helped in her first run for the high court in 2003.

Until the Allegheny County jury concludes its deliberations, Melvin will sit on the high court under a cloud, even though she has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

That untenable situation last week prompted the state's most prominent court-reform group, Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, to call for the justice to take a leave - or for Orie's colleagues to suspend her.

"Judges and especially Supreme Court justices should not be permitted to judge others while under the cloud of such a serious investigation," said Lynn A. Marks, PMC's executive director.

While there is no sign that the court will act, or that Melvin plans to remove herself, unquestionably it would be in the best interests of the state's judiciary if she took that unprecedented step - at least until her name is cleared.

The allegations of illegal political activity already come perilously close to the justice. Her two sisters, State Sen. Jane Orie (R., Allegheny) and Janine Orie, her longtime court staffer, face criminal charges connected with using the senator's staff to conduct Melvin's campaign for the high court. Testimony at a hearing for Janine Orie alleged that politicking took place "within every judicial office" of then-Superior Court Judge Melvin over a dozen-year span.

The allegations alone ought to be enough to shake the public's faith in the state's system of electing its most powerful judges.

No matter what the outcome of the inquiry into the Orie sisters, the state judiciary would not have to weather such controversy if its top judges were chosen through a merit-based system of appointment, with voters' concurrence through nonpartisan retention elections.

The push for merit selection enjoys key support from Gov. Corbett and a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers. With the Melvin controversy bringing renewed attention to Pennsylvania's discredited system of electing judges, Harrisburg officials should seize the moment and move ahead on judicial reform.