Professor Bruce Green shared his expert opinion on a proposal that would make it harder for prosecutors to seek public office in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Senate recently passed a bill that would make it more difficult for the state’s attorney general and county prosecutors to seek public office after leaving their law enforcement posts.The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Codey and Sen. Nicholas Sacco, would bar the New Jersey attorney general, first assistant attorneys general, county prosecutors, assistant prosecutors and legal assistants to a prosecutor from running for public office for three years after the leave their law enforcement jobs.…“The proposal seems well intentioned, but it comes at a cost and will probably do little to serve its objective,” Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham University School of Law, told Law360 in an email on Tuesday.He said that he had never heard of a proposal such as this and, that, while it is innovative, it could result in governments’ missing out on qualified candidates.If this were adopted in other states, Green said, it would have prevented Earl Warren from going straight from the California Attorney General’s Office to becoming governor of California, and Thomas Dewey from being elected New York’s governor soon after leaving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.“In other words, the law would deny the state the opportunity for well-qualified candidates to use the prosecutor’s office as a springboard,” Green said. “It is true that prosecutors should not misuse the power of their offices to fuel their ambitions — political ambitions or other ambitions. But restricting their right to run for office will not stop prosecutors from being ambitious.”
