Judicial elections, democratic appointment (e.g., senate confirmation), and the Missouri Plan (a/k/a "merit selection")

Search This Blog

Monday, January 26, 2015

Kansas Supreme Court Selection Reform and School Finance

This article in the Wichita Eagle by Bryan Lowry is one of the better news stories on the Kansas Supreme Court selection process because it describes that process accurately "The current system relies on a nine-member commission to choose nominees, with four of those members appointed by the governor and the other five selected by a vote of the state’s practice attorneys" rather than (as many lower quality articles say) "a non-partisan commission of attorneys and non-attorneys."

Bryan Lowry also rightly refrains from using the propaganda phrase "merit selection" to describe the current system.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Judicial Campaign Contribution Buys Outcome of a Case

An Arkansas trial judge pled guilty to reducing a negligence verdict from $5.2 million to $1 million in exchange for contributions to his election campaign for appellate court.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Judicial Elections, Judicial Impartiality and Legitimate Judicial Lawmaking: Williams-Yulee v. the Florida Bar

Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, will be argued before the Supreme Court this week: January 20, 2015.

My new article, Judicial Elections, Judicial Impartiality and Legitimate Judicial Lawmaking: Williams-Yulee v. the Florida Bar, in Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc, Vol. 68, 2015, is part of a Roundtable including several thoughtful articles. My abstract:

 At the level of constitutional law, Williams-Yulee is a First Amendment case about judicial campaign fundraising. The First Amendment issues raised by judicial campaigns and money in politics are vital, and they are not the only issues implicated by Williams-Yulee. Williams-Yulee also implicates broader questions about how judicial election campaigns should be funded and ultimately whether to have judicial elections at all. I bring to Williams-Yulee a longstanding interest in a wide range of legal and policy issues surrounding judicial selection, including issues surrounding the extent and implications of correlations between judicial campaign contributions and judges’ rulings. Williams-Yulee seems an opportune time to reconsider my and others’ longstanding concerns about judicial elections.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Kansas Gov. Brownback to Pursue Judicial Selection Reform

In this State of the State address this evening, Brownback "promised to take another run at a constitutional amendment that would give him and future governors the authority to pick the justices on the state Supreme Court, with the consent of the Senate", according to the Wichita Eagle which, unfortunately, uses the propagandistic phrase "merit system" to describe the current Kansas Supreme Court selection process. The Eagle describes the current system as involving "a commission of lawyers and lay people" but does not point out the controversial and undemocratic aspect of this system: Kansas is the only state that allows its bar to select a majority of the nominating commission.

As the Eagle says, "The Legislature already changed the selection process for the state Court of Appeals, but changing it for the Supreme Court would require a constitutional amendment."

Monday, January 12, 2015

Renewed Push to Change Kansas Supreme Court Selection

Changing the way Supreme Court justices are selected will be the highest priority for the majority of the Kansas Legislature this year, according to Chapman Rackaway, a political science professor at Fort Hays State University.

"Obviously the governor wants selection of all judges to be consolidated under the governor’s office, and so that’s going to be a front-burner issue for this legislature," Rackaway said. "They’ll get it done. They have plenty of loyalty to the governor. They share his goal on this. So I think that would be a pretty easy thing for them to get done."

I don't know that I agree with this.  First, a constitutional amendment to change Kansas Supreme Court selection requires two-thirds of both houses of the legislature, which is part of why constitutional amendments are pretty rare.

Second, I wouldn't characterize this issue as this governor wanting more power over judicial selection.  Those of us advocating reform have been advocating it through several governors of both parties and, in my case, advocating it nationally regardless of the state's political leanings.  Moving from the Kansas's current bar-empowering version of the Missouri Plan to a senate confirmation is a matter of principle for the long-term, not a way to empower a particular governor at a particular time and place.

Friday, January 9, 2015

SCOTUS to Address Judicial Election Campaign Funding

Is it constitutional to prevent candidates in judicial elections from personally soliciting campaign contributions?  The Supreme Court may tell us when it rules in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar.  It is scheduled for argument Jan. 20, 2015.

"The case brings three important questions to the fore, Ware said. The narrow question is whether prohibiting a judicial candidate from personally soliciting campaign funds is constitutional. This question is intertwined with broader questions about how to fund judicial election campaigns and, at the broadest level, whether to have judicial elections at all." 

Kansas Judicial Retention Elections

As I noted in October, The Kansas Republican Party's chairman and GOP Gov. Sam Brownback encouraged voters to remove two of the court's seven justices in the Nov. 4 election.  The two, Justices Lee Johnson and Eric Rosen, both appointed by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, kept their jobs but won less than 53 percent of the vote.

Previously, no Kansas justice had received a "yes" vote of less than 62 percent and that was in 2010, when the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life waged a "fire Beier" campaign against Justice Carol Beier.

As Brad Cooper of the KC Star writes, "Some scholars attribute the increasing profile of retention elections to the way states like Kansas pick judges. The say those systems, which employ a screening process for candidates, are influenced too much by lawyers with liberal inclinations."  
 
What is this screening process and what role does it give lawyers? 

 As Cooper writes"Supreme Court justices in Kansas are appointed by the governor, who chooses from a panel of three candidates recommended by a screening panel made up of five lawyers and four nonlawyers."  

What is crucial, however, is that those five lawyers are selected in a shockingly undemocratic way.  They are selected in elections open to only about 10,000 people in the state: the members of the Kansas Bar. No other state allows its bar to select a majority of its nominating commission.  Kansas Supreme Court selection is undemocratic and extreme.

I'm not sure about Cooper's statement that "About half the states choose Supreme Court judges using screening committees similar to Kansas’ system." Perhaps this means only that about the half states have a nominating commission, but the keys are:

1. Is if there is a nominating commission, then who selects its members.  Who picks the pickers? 

2. Is the nominating commission able to ensure that one of its nominees joins the court or is the governor's choice among those nominees subject to senate confirmation which, if denied, may require the commission to nominate someone else.




Thursday, January 8, 2015

Wisconsin Judicial Retirement Age and Supreme Court Ideology

In 1977, Wisconsin voters amended the state constitution directing the Legislature to set a mandatory judicial retirement age no earlier than age 70. The Legislature has not in fact done that.  But now at requirement was never acted on.  But now State Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, said he plans to introduce a bill in the upcoming legislative session setting the mandatory retirement age at 75.

“Thirty-three states have mandatory retirements between the ages of 70 and 75,” Knudson said. “Vermont is the highest with an age of 90.”

If passed by the Republican-run Legislature next year, all judges — except reserve or temporary judges — who are over 75 years old would have to retire immediately or within a matter of months.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, "Such legislation would give Republican Gov. Scott Walker numerous opportunities to appoint judges to his liking to fill unexpired terms of judges and justices hitting the mandatory retirement age," including three state Supreme Court justices: Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, 81, Justice Pat Roggensack, 74, and Justice N. Patrick Crooks, 76.

The Wisconsin State Journal describes Abrahamson as "part of the three-member liberal minority on the court."