01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 3, 2004

IN THE WANING DAYS of the legislative session, Rhode Island's solons -- eager to stick it to Governor Carcieri -- handed Chief Justice Frank Williams a handsome gift.

Without allowing the public an effective opportunity to bring up the problems with the idea, the General Assembly acceded to Justice Williams's wish to cut the governor out of budget decisions about the judiciary.

In most states, the executive branch -- which tends to have purchasing and budget expertise -- has a role in establishing the judicial branch's budget. In many of the states where that is not the case, judges are elected -- providing the public with a check on their behavior that is absent in Rhode Island.

Common sense suggests that it is harder for judges and legislators to engage in deals that damage the public if the executive branch provides a check on that power.

But that debate was not allowed to take place. This power grab was attached to the state budget and rammed through within days.

Obviously, such a change affects the relationship between the branches. Now, the judges are directly beholden to powerful legislators for their budgets, including their pay and perks. Appointed for life, and beyond the public's reach, judges will have a strong incentive to shade decisions in favor of those legislators. We can only hope they resist that temptation.

By the same token, lawyer-legislators now have an incentive to give judges what they want at budget time. They will probably conclude that they and their clients will be treated better in court if they lavishly reward the judiciary.

As these new power relationships unfold, it is interesting that the Supreme Court is preparing to rule on a case involving one of the state's most powerful legislators, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen Alves (D.-West Warwick).

Mr. Alves has dragged a constituent and former foe, high-school social-studies teacher Alan Palazzo, through the courts for years for having written letters to the editor that Mr. Alves found unduly critical.

The senator does not seem to understand that, in America, citizens -- even annoying activists, as some consider Mr. Palazzo to be -- have a constitutional right to question their elected officials. It is one of our essential freedoms. Mr. Palazzo contends that he has been forced to spend, so far, $50,000-$60,000 of his own money defending his First Amendment right.

As Mr. Palazzo sees it, Senator Alves tried to use the courts to intimidate him into silence, by burdening him with crushing legal bills. That would seem to violate a 1993 state law that bars the powerful from using "strategic litigation against public participation" -- known as SLAPP suits, for short.

In 2002, Superior Court Judge Netti Vogel ruled that Senator Alves was, indeed, out of bounds. She ordered the senator to pay Mr. Palazzo $17,000 to cover some of his legal bills. Senator Alves appealed -- meaning yet more legal bills for Mr. Palazzo -- and the case was finally heard by Frank Williams and the Supreme Court this past April.

During that hearing, one justice, Maureen McKenna Goldberg -- married to Robert Goldberg, a powerful lobbyist who appears before Senator Alves's committee -- made a bizarre observation when Mr. Palazzo's lawyer held up a copy of the Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom of Speech, showing a man standing up in a public meeting expressing his opinion.

"He [Mr. Palazzo] wasn't speaking. He was sitting in front of his word processor," she said. As if a letter to the editor were not a form of free speech!

According to the Rhode Island Judiciary's Web page, the justices follow up a hearing by deciding the case and writing opinions. "This process usually takes four to six weeks," it says. Mr. Palazzo has been waiting for 15 weeks now for a ruling that one would think would be a slam dunk in his favor.

While waiting for the ruling, Mr. Palazzo has seen the legislature give Chief Justice Williams the gift he long sought -- appended to the budget in Senator Alves's committee. Meanwhile, Senator Alves declined to recuse himself when Chief Justice Williams appeared before his committee seeking more money to build the Kent County Court House. And now, the court has been asked to rule on the constitutionality of a casino ballot question -- a matter of great interest to powerful West Warwick politicians, including Senator Alves.

Chief Justice Williams insists that the court is in the business of dispensing justice -- not favoring powerful legislators -- and one hopes he proves to be right. I believe that the court will side with Mr. Palazzo, given many decades of federal and state constitutional law upholding the First Amendment. And it is a good sign that outgoing Justice Robert Flanders -- a keenly intelligent defender of constitutional freedoms -- was in on the decision.

But the politics surrounding all of this -- deeply incestuous, as always, in Rhode Island -- is breathtaking. It certainly makes one wish that the legislature had held public hearings this year about specific plans to shake up the balance of power between the branches, before giving Justice Williams his eleventh-hour present.

Edward Achorn is The Journal's deputy editorial-pages editor. His e-mail address is eachorn [at] projo.com.