Nearly a year ago, Samuel Stretton lost a case he had argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
But the West Chester attorney didn't learn until recently that the two law firms opposing him had contributed a total of $36,000 (ranging from $1,000 to $16,000 per individual judge) to judicial campaigns.
Stretton is not pleased.
"Those contributions should have been disclosed to the litigants," he says, "especially if it was a substantial amount of money."
Without disclosure, he explains, there's a perception of judicial impropriety.
Many Pennsylvanians share Stretton's concern.
A poll commissioned by the state Supreme Court found that nearly 90 percent of Pennsylvanians believe campaign contributions affect judicial decision making at least some of the time.
Clearly, the perception is that judges can be bought.
But, in actuality, do contributions influence decisions?
The nonpartisan American Judicature Society recently examined the 82 civil cases decided by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2008 and 2009.
Sixty percent of those cases involved a law firm, lawyer or party in a case that had contributed to at least one of the sitting judges.
Those contributions totaled millions of dollars, much of it provided by large Philadelphia- and Pittsburgh-based law firms that regularly dispatch lawyers to argue cases before state appellate courts.
The study concluded that there are reasons to question the fairness of the court's decisions based on the frequency with which contributors later appear before judges.
But the study made no attempt to determine whether contributions actually influenced decisions.
Using the same data, Inside Story has tried to determine whether money matters when it comes to justice.
On the surface, results seem clear-cut: When they are matched against each other, law firms that contribute money to judges win far more cases than non-contributing firms.
Of the 82 cases, only 15 included contributing law firms on one side and non-contributing firms on the other.
Firms that had contributed to one or more of the judges' campaigns won 11 of those cases. Firms that did not contribute to judicial campaigns won the other four.
When contributors win nearly three-quarters of such cases, the pattern suggests that contributions might affect judicial outcomes.
But there are several significant caveats.
Of the 11 cases that contributing firms won, eight were decided unanimously by the court. In those cases, judges who received money from law firms — and those who did not — voted together. They usually affirmed a lower court's decision.
Of the four cases won by non-contributing firms, three also were decided unanimously.
The fourth win of a non-contributing firm was decided by a 4-3 vote. And in that case the losing firm contributed only to one judge — who voted against that firm's position.
Other evidence also undercuts the possibility that money affects court decisions.
The only law firm that won more than one of the 15 cases gave relatively small amounts, totaling $6,000, to two judges.
On the other hand, the only firm that lost more than one case gave a total of at least $20,000 to two judges.
These ambiguous results are typical of such studies, according to Rachel Caufield, a research fellow at the American Judicature Society.
"I haven't yet seen any successful effort to link contributions to decision-making," she notes.
Caufield says there are two main reasons for that.
First, it is nearly impossible to account for the legal basis of any decision, especially unanimous decisions that indicate agreement on what the law requires.
Second is "causality."
"All studies of contributions and voting behavior, including legislative studies, have a problem determining which came first," Caufield says.
That is, do donors give to candidates whom they hope share their judicial or political values, or do judges favor big donors?
"Voting behavior may be driving donations," she explains, "but it looks exactly the same as donations driving voting behavior."
Caufield says she sees no evidence in the 15-case analysis that money is influencing votes; she also sees no evidence that money is not influencing votes.
But she adds that nothing in the study diminishes the perception that money may be influencing votes.
Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, a statewide organization dedicated to merit selection of judges, rather than by popular election, comments similarly on the 15-case analysis.
"It is really hard to attribute a judge's decision to one individual factor, especially in unanimous cases," says Shira Goodman, the organization's associate director.
"The law is not set in stone. We can't explain each individual justice's reason or motivation for voting one way or another."
Even if all 15 cases had been decided in favor of campaign contributors, she says, it would not prove anything about individual judicial decisions.
"Perception does matter," she notes, however. "People want to believe when they go to court that they had a fair hearing."
More than a perception of fairness is at issue, says Samuel Stretton, the West Chester attorney. He specializes in legal ethics and often represents judges and lawyers accused of misconduct.
The appearance of judicial impropriety is a serious concern, he explains.
Stretton's firm lost one of the 15 cases against contributing law firms. He says he should have known those firms contributed money to judges sitting on his case long before a reporter told him last week.
He says that information should have been divulged at the beginning of the appeals process. He would have raised the issue with the judges and they could have decided whether to recuse themselves from the case.
Otherwise, he notes, "it creates a cynical view" when he discovers that information after the case is over.
"I'm not saying that it necessarily affects the outcome of a case," he adds, "but it creates the appearance of impropriety, and an appearance of impropriety is not allowed for judges."
Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College and an observer of Pennsylvania politics for three decades, says the major problem is the amount of money contributed to judicial campaigns in recent years.
In 2007, candidates for two Supreme Court seats took in nearly $8 million before the general election. Two candidates for one Supreme Court seat raised $4.7 million last year.
That kind of money causes public concern, Madonna says, because "if we turn judicial elections into regular political campaigns, it creates the perception that the judiciary is biased."
Beyond the perception problem, he adds, "it erodes confidence in the judiciary when judges act like politicians."
That's what worries him, he says, not whether contributions affect how judges decide cases.
"I never necessarily believed that the money itself would affect a decision," he says.
Concerns about money influencing the outcome of elections and official decisions afterwards is not restricted to the judiciary.
Pennsylvania is one of the few states that still does not restrict how much a donor or political action committee may contribute to any election.
Several legislators have proposed campaign finance reform bills that would place caps on contributions and require more frequent public reporting and clearer disclosure of sources.
These changes, if approved, would not go far enough in the judicial sector to please Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.
"Get the money out of the (judicial selection) process altogether," says Shira Goodman. "Then you've taken away the foundation for the perception that judges may be biased."
Such a change would require an amendment to the state constitution, a difficult, multi-year procedure.