The measurable shift of Mississippi's courts toward excessive jury awards for plaintiffs against corporations and doctors is at least in part the result of judges who are less likely to restrain those excesses through their discretionary and rule-interpreting authority.

Today's third installment of a four-day Daily Journal series on Mississippi's civil justice system examines the role that judges - and in particular the justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court - play in shaping the civil justice climate by their interpretation of legislative statutes and their adoption and use of procedural rules.

Judges appear less likely today than before to dismiss lawsuits where the evidence is not strong, to resist jury shopping by plaintiffs, or to exercise their authority to rein in "runaway" juries.

Compounding the increasing imbalance in the system is that judicial races, especially but not limited to Supreme Court campaigns, have become heavily-financed showdowns between opposing groups - trial lawyers and business - seeking favor.

Money and justice - or money or justice - lie at the center of a white-hot debate about the application of laws in liability and malpractice lawsuits in Mississippi's circuit courts - and a widely perceived anti-business tilt on the nine-member state Supreme Court.

Personalities, in principle, play no role in the judicial system, but the principle is compromised in Mississippi because electoral politics controls who sits in judgment and represents the law.

In Mississippi, as a round of Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals races revealed in 2000, money plays an unhealthy role. Unprecedented sums poured into races for key judgeships from sources inside and outside the state. Advertising isn't inherently unhealthy or unethical (no honest newspaper could argue otherwise). However, the injection of peripheral passions and the moral equivalent of promises about issues before the courts borders on politics ahead of the rule of law.

No fair person argues against justice; every fair person should argue against excess in assigning blame and "punishing" defendants with monetary awards that are increasingly disproportionate to even the allegations of injury received.

Mississippi's judicial system needs a reality check, as it has in other historical episodes involving civil rights and public education, both heavy issues in the scales of justice.

* Mississippi needs more judges and justices who generally embrace restraint as a virtue under law.

* Mississippi needs more judges and justices who recognize the imbalance of apparently infinite punitive, monetary damages against people and business institutions of finite resources.

* Mississippi needs more judges and justices who recognize the absurdity of venue decisions based on situational strings rather than firm legal ground.

* Mississippi needs more judges and justices who recognize that joining dozens, hundreds, or thousands of plaintiffs from far-distant places, can be a perversion, not an enhancement, of justice.

n Mississippi needs more judges and justices who believe that punitive damages must rest on the highest levels of evidence supporting negligence.

* Mississippi needs more judges and justices who believe that reasonable damages can mete out justice for plaintiffs - and protect defendants from the prospect of financial obliteration for a mistake that wasn't criminally intentional.

The noted plaintiffs' attorney, Richard Scruggs of Pascagoula, said recently he doesn't hear the voice of the people in the movement for civil justice reform.

If so, perhaps his hearing and others' hearing will improve when the people's voices protest increasingly inadequate medical care and diminishing opportunity for fulfillment of their dreams - because those who can empower those dreams view Mississippi's judicial system and related economic climate as a primary obstacle.