Judges

The Don Koster-Sander Elden race is one of extreme contrasts. Just looking at the candidates immediately opens speculation on their politics. Koster floats through an appearance, bushy-haired and casually-dressed, rambling on the down falls of the bulky justice system. Elden, neatly slicked-down white hair and conservative grey business suit, runs down his precise rap in clean, executive fashion. One of these men will take the 15th District Court seat, and determine the fate of all the drunks, traffic violators and other unlucky humans who pass through by the bunch.

Koster's service to the community include defense of persons arrested in the Summer of 1969 S. University street party, the L.S. & A. sit-in that fall, and the Black Action Movement strike the next year. After Gov. Milliken ordered the 1970 Goose Lake rock festival closed, Koster filed a similar injunction against that year's Michigan-Michigan State game, charging the same conditions were present. 

Known affectionately in his campaign literature as "Sandy," Judge Elden has had little difficulty in alienating large numbers of progressive citizens in the last few years.

His most famous act was probably the voiding of the $5 marijuana law in 1972, but his judicial malfeasance goes farther back than that. As president of Wolverine Council, Boy Scouts of America, Elden prevented SDS from using nearby Boy Scout property for its 1968 convention. In 1970 he ruled convictions resulting from the previous year's L.S. & A. sit-in valid, leaving it to a higher court to find those convictions unconstitutional. Also in 1969, he had to be asked to disqualify himself from rent strike cases when it was learned he owned a local exterminating company doing business with Ann Arbor landlords.

Elden is not without his good points, however. The lawyers who practice before his bench find him highly competent as indicted by the extremely high marks given him by the Washtenaw County Bar Association.

"He's open-minded, listens and is even a tiny bit liberal, "reports one member of the bar who does many tenant cases before him.

"Considering that he is a pig," observed a law student working with Legal Aid, "he is as fair as possible."

And maybe Elden is learning. Asked recently whether he thought the charter amendment $5 law was unconstitutional like the earlier one he struck down, he is reported to have said, "you won't find out by me."

The SUN wants to make sure that we don't find out by him.

Koster says he wants to bring an end to the court's image as a "collection agency," expanding the court to include evening and weekend sessions, child-care for parents spending their day in court, and counseling and streamlining of procedures in Small Claims court.

"This court has to be accessible to the people, not just to lawyers and judges," Koster says. "The Court exists to serve the people ahead of the state."

-Jerry Clarke