New York Times

WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court argument about how the First Amendment applies to judicial elections turned unusually personal on Tuesday, with several justices reflecting on the power and dignity of the judiciary.

The question in the case was whether Florida could prohibit judicial candidates from personally asking for campaign contributions. On that issue, the court seemed closely divided.

But there seemed to be something approaching a consensus that judicial campaigns are different from those for political office and that judges wield a distinctive type of power.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are appointed rather than elected. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor extrapolated from her own experiences to suggest that personal requests for money from elected judges may involve an element of coercion.

It’s very, very, very rare,” she said, for lawyers to turn her down when she asks them “to do something — whether it’s serve on a committee, help organize something, do whatever it is that I’m asking.”

“Isn’t it inherent in the lawyer-judge context that people are going to say yes?” she asked.

Judges in the 39 states with judicial elections raise money from lawyers who appear before them, though generally through campaign committees rather than by making personal requests for contributions. In Florida and 29 other states, personal solicitations are banned.

But the bans can seem porous. In Florida, for instance, candidates are allowed to know who has contributed and to express gratitude. They can say thank you, but they are not allowed to say please.

The difference is significant, Justice Antonin Scalia said, because asking for money is demeaning to judicial dignity. “If you write a thank-you note, you are not a mendicant,” he said. “You are not going around holding your hat out asking people for money.”

Tuesday’s case, Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, No. 13-1499, concerns Lanell Williams-Yulee, who ran unsuccessfully for a judgeship in 2009 in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa. She was reprimanded and required to pay $1,860 in court costs for signing a fund-raising letter.

Andrew J. Pincus, one of Ms. Williams-Yulee’s lawyers, relied heavily on the fact that her mass mailing was not a face-to-face or one-on-one communication. He suggested that limitations along those lines might satisfy the First Amendment.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who probably holds the decisive vote, said Mr. Pincus’s proposed distinctions were unworkable.

“You have all sorts of gradations,” he said. “What about a personal one-on-one letter? How is that different?”

“And then,” Justice Kennedy continued, “if we say, well, the one-on-one letter, that’s almost like a personal solicitation, we can ban that, then what about a letter to five people? And then we’re off to the races.”

Justice Elena Kagan, a former dean of Harvard Law School, said striking down the ban could have consequences for federal judges, who are prohibited from lending their names for even charitable fund-raising.

Mr. Pincus said those rules are constitutional because they do not involve elections. But Justice Kagan drew the opposite conclusion.

“Who cares whether I solicit funds on behalf of my old law school?” she asked. “It doesn’t have anything to do with what rulings I’m going to issue, who I’m going to favor, who I’m not going to favor.”

Barry Richard, a lawyer for the Florida Bar, which filed the complaint against Ms. Williams-Yulee, said the ban she challenged played an important role in cutting “the direct link that creates the quid pro quo relationship.”

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the prohibition was too broad in banning even requests to, say, college classmates. “Nobody would say there’s any real risk of corruption because he’s calling up his old friends,” the chief justice said.

He added that Florida’s ban swept too broadly in a second way. “Is there really the prospect of the appearance of partiality,” he asked, “if you have a radio ad that says, you know, ‘This is my philosophy; please send me a contribution?’”

In a 2002 decision allowing judges running for office to take stands on political and legal issues, the Supreme Court said the First Amendment has an important role to play in judicial elections. “If the state has a problem with judicial impartiality,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in a concurrence, “it is largely one the state brought upon itself by continuing the practice of popularly electing judges.”

Chief Justice Roberts made a similar point on Tuesday. “The fundamental choice was made by the state when they said we’re going to have judges elected,” he told Mr. Richard.

“You’re under a great burden,” the chief justice said, “in trying to figure out how you’re going to fix that without contravening the First Amendment.”

Justice Breyer responded for Mr. Richard. “Why is it a great burden?” he asked. “Does it change because you elect the judge, that you’re changing the fundamental role of the judge?”