The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT What a difference a year can make – especially if you’re a state lawmaker. In unexpectedly resigning his longtime House seat last July after winning the Republican primary, Alan Clemmons, a Myrtle Beach attorney, said in an affidavit to the State Election Commission that he was withdrawing from the general election because […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT An attorney who works in a state senator’s law firm is Spartanburg County’s new master-in-equity judge – less than three months after the county’s legislative delegation, of which the senator is a member, quietly nominated her. The Senate and House this week confirmed Shannon Phillips, an attorney in Sen. Scott Talley’s law […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The powerful S.C. House speaker, who controls half of the appointments on a committee that nominates judges for election in the Legislature, wants to expand the size of the state’s highest court and eliminate the cap on judicial nominees. Rep. Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, is the main sponsor of a joint resolution calling […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty is a former state House member. So is James Lockemy, chief judge of the S.C. Court of Appeals, the state’s second-highest court. The road from the State House to the court house historically has been an easy one, as The Nerve has previously reported. Last […]