前程百利小编为大家带来托福阅读材料。弗罗里达州从腐败丑闻中看到了法官不能任性选。文章的难词已经标示出来，希望大家可以学习到相关知识，并通过不断的阅读练习提高自己的托福阅读能力。
After a major corruption(腐败) scandal(丑闻) among its state judges, Florida enforced new judicial ethics rules, including one prohibiting(禁止) judicial candidates from personally soliciting(索取，招揽) campaign donations(竞选资助). But, as a case at the U.S. Supreme Court this week shows, the state would have been better off simply ending the perversity (任性，执意)of electing judges, rather than attempting to make a fundamentally flawed(从根本上讲有缺陷的) practice somewhat less awful.
The case involves Lamella Williams-Yulee, a former candidate for county judge in Hillsborough County, Fla. The Florida Bar fined(处罚) her for sending out alerter in 2009 announcing her campaign and asking for donations. She challenged the punishment all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard argument son the case Tuesday.
Andrew J. Pinks, Ms. Williams-Yulee’s lawyer, admitted that the image of judges buttonholing(强迫听取) lawyers and litigants who appear in their courtrooms is so grotesque(荒谬) that a ban on face-to-face solicitation(面对面谈话) is warranted. But, he argued, the First Amendment protects written solicitations, as well as those conveyed to large groups of people. Florida allows campaign committees working on behalf of the candidates to ask for money freely, the argument goes, so testate doesn’t really gain much by restricting written or mass solicitations from candidates themselves.
For the Florida Bar(法庭的总称), Barry Richard had to argue the opposite: There’s no difference between soliciting donations face-to-face(当面索要政治献金) and doing so in a personal letter(通过私人信件索要政治献金) that justifies treating the practices differently, but there is a big difference between getting a personal solicitation from a judge and getting one from a judge’s campaign committee. That’s why the state can draw the line it did.
Mr. Richard has the better side of the argument. The state has strong interest in encouraging judges to apply the law impartially; building even the thin barrier of a committee between judicial candidates and campaign contributors not only lowers the possibility of quid-pro-quo corruption(quid-pro-quo的意思是交换), which is illegal for any kind of candidate, but also reduces the appearance of corruption, lessens the prospect of donors exerting undue influence on(施加不当影响) legal proceedings and weakens the ability of judges to extort(敲诈) contributions from otherwise unwilling contributors. A judge’s face or signature increases the gravity of a donation request. It is very hardtop draw a line honoring that principle short of banning all personal solicitations.
Mr. Pinks, though, is unquestionably right about one thing. “Testate has adopted an election system that puts judges in the political fray(争斗),” he said Tuesday. “Some things necessarily come with the fact that a state has made the choice to choose judges via election.” Absent a public election financing scheme(选举资助体系), the fact that judges need campaign donations in the first place means that donors and candidates will have an avenue(途径，渠道) to corrupt the judicial process, no matter how narrow states try to make it. This Supreme Court, meanwhile, isn’t likely to give states wholly free hand in regulating judicial elections, owing to concerns about stifling(抑制，扼杀) free speech(言论自由). The rat’s nest of a case before the court is just one, lousy(糟糕的) product of an unwise system. The real solution is to do away with that system, appointing state judges rather than electing them.
以上就是前程百利小编为大家带来的托福阅读材料，平时的阅读练习是托福考试阅读备考的重要一环。希望大家利用好每份材料，尽可能多地从中获取知识。预祝大家托福考试取得好成绩。
