For years, judges have steered lucrative jobs--like overseeing estates of people who die without wills--to politically connected lawyers. With election reforms and a crackdown on lobbying (however successful that's been), the courts have been the final frontier of old school favor trading. Lately, judicial reform has been focused on the system of electing judges, a push started mainly in Brooklyn.

If a politically connected guy like Stanley can't feed at the judicial trough, what's next?

--Azi Paybarah