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As the Pioneer Press explains in an editorial about interim judicial appointees, Minnesota judges “usually take office via a gubernatorial appointment, but then must win re-election to stay in office. This makes it a unique office, out of the flow of daily partisan politics but subject to being sucked in at any moment.” The editorial praises the interim appointment system as a better way to select impartial judges:

Judges should be appointed based on merit and not on political calculus. Fairness, experience and integrity are paramount virtues. We love political battling in legislative races but do not want judicial candidates to be cozying up to interest groups, declaring their views on issues pending before them or attacking foes on television. We want Minnesotans to believe that the judge before whom they are appearing is there for the right reasons and will apply the law impartially.

This is a good summary of the goals of Merit Selection advocates. We want an appellate bench staffed by judges who know and respect the law, and who will apply it without regard to popular opinion, political whims, or the pressures of campaign donors.

Merit Selection is the system designed to accomplish this. While no system can entirely remove politics from judicial selection, Merit Selection frees the process from ever-increasing campaign spending and the exaggerated value of political savvy over ability and experience.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson is worried about reelection. The vote won’t be held until next year, but in the aftermath of the record-setting 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin judicial elections, she’s already lining up bipartisan support and trying to raise funds. Neatly summing up the problems with judicial elections, her fundraising committee wrote:

“After the last two judicial campaigns, you probably don’t need a sermon on what’s wrong with the way we elected judges in this state, or the embarrassingly small number of people who vote in judicial elections, or the tenor and content of the campaign advertisements sponsored by some organizations… We all know how powerful those 30-second ads can be.”

Judicial elections are getting more expensive everywhere; just think what will happen in Pennsylvania next year.

With a vacancy on Missouri’s Supreme Court, there is renewed criticism of the Missouri Plan, and talk in some circles about trying to get rid of the Plan and institute judicial elections. Check out Blue Girl’s post on Show Me Progress, which defends Missouri’s Merit Selection system.

Highlighting the benefits of the state’s model Merit Selection system, Blue Girl explains; “One of the most elegant features of the plan is the way it defangs the money monster. Success in partisan elections depends on money, on the financial contributors of donors (a very specious proposition when we are talking about the very concept of Justice)…” Implementing Merit Selection for Pennsylvania’s appellate courts would “defang the growing money monster” here as well.

Using common sense and frank talk, Blue Girl also attacks a frequently heard criticism of Merit Selection:

Detractors say that the process is too reliant on the input of lawyers, but that argument doesn’t get off the starting blocks with me. Who better to make judgments about legal professionals than other legal professionals? [W]hat a nightmare [it] would be if judges owed political favors to certain segments of the electorate, and naturally had a political bias against others. How could you call that justice?

Thanks, Blue Girl for some excellent insights on Merit Selection. We’ll keep our readers posted on the fight to preserve the Missouri Plan.

Minnesota is bracing itself for increasingly negative and expensive judicial elections. Tapped by the State Bar Association to be the Chairman of the Judicial Election Campaign Conduct Committee, attorney David Stowman will try to prevent the elections from turning ugly and partisan.

Stowman points out that judicial elections should be different than other elections. “Judges do not have a constituency, they are more like a referee.” This essential role is threatened by one of the biggest problems with judicial elections: the influence of money and the buying of influence. “Certainly none of us would want to be sitting in front of a judge that had taken large campaign contributions from the other side of the counsel table,” he said.

States that have judicial elections, like Minnesota and our own Pennsylvania, should expect judicial elections to become increasingly expensive and nasty. Stowman hopes that the Judicial Election Campaign Conduct Committee will only be temporary, and that Minnesota will move away from judicial elections. Some are calling for Merit Selection. By removing the money, Merit Selection provides a cleaner, more dignified process.

Link to story; free, requires registration.

A group called Johnson Countians for Justice is fighting to keep its Merit Selection system for selecting local judges. This fall, a ballot initiative will propose eliminating the Merit Selection system and replacing it with partisan elections. Johnson Countians for Justice recently held a press conference to highlight the importance of the issue and has unveiled a well-researched website with great information for concerned voters. Here’s an excerpt from their FAQ, explaining why Kansas Counties that use Merit Selection actually allow more voter input in judicial selection than those that elect their judges:

In the 2004 Kansas general election of judicial partisan elections, only 15 out of 85 had more than one candidate on the ballot. In contrast, the voters in judicial districts with the merit selection process have the right vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to retain all of the judges in that district. Even in the 2006 primary election, only 8 of the 34 partisan elected judges had opposition.

We will follow this effort in the coming months and we wish Johnson Countians for Justice well in their fight to protect Merit Selection.

Merit Selection of judges in Tennessee involves a 3-part system of Merit Selection, judicial performance evaluation, and retention elections. Judges are nominated for gubernatorial appointment by a 17-member Judicial Selection Commission (14 lawyers and 3 non-lawyer citizens). Appellate judges stand for retention election every 8 years.

The Tennessee Plan has been in place since the early 1970s and is also known as the “Modified Missouri Plan.” It’s “winding down” this year, because the Tennessee legislature failed to reauthorize it, mostly because of allegations of too much secrecy in the meetings of the Judicial Selection Commission.

But the way to address the problems is not to scrap the Tennessee Plan and replace it with elections, says Governor Phil Bredesen — and we agree. Tennessee risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As Governor Bredesen suggests, perceived problems of secrecy and alleged “back-room dealing” can be addressed by amending the statute to require additional public meetings of the Commission. As the Governor explains, putting a worse system in place is not the answer:

The issue is that when you have state-wide elections, basically for appellate judges, the only people who care about those are people with very narrow special interests. They’re expensive elections because they’re state-wide, and I just think you’d have this scramble to have, you know, every interest out there whether it be business or trial lawyers or anybody else trying to elect their judges and we’d have a vastly worse system than we have today.

The problem in Tennessee isn’t secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms. That flimsy accusation is mostly a “smokescreen” itself for the special interests who seek to inject even more politics — and potentially millions of dollars — into Tennessee’s judicial selection system.

There is uncertainty in Tennessee about how appellate court judges will be selected now that the legislature failed to renew Tennesee’s Merit Selection system, which is scheduled to sunset next year. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and apparently some hesitancy among potential applicants. This is not only because it’s not clear what the selection process will entail, but also because of specific concerns related to judicial elections.

Former Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny White, now a law professor, attributes the lack of applicants to concern about out-of-state money flowing in to influence judicial elections: “‘It only happens in states where there are elected judges on the bench.’”

We understand this concern, because this is what happened in Pennsylvania last year. We’ll keep watching Tennessee to see what happens there.

Voices Of Merit is an occasional series featuring insights from places where Merit Selection is already at work.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, Superior Court judges have been chosen by Merit Selection since 1974, after a voter-ratified constitutional change. The court publishes a brochure with the straightforward title Merit Selection Of Judges. It explains how the switch to Merit Selection has helped to create a court of skilled, diverse and fair-minded judges, “free from political debts that supporters may expect to be paid.” These are exactly the goals we have in mind for Pennsylvania’s appellate courts.

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer editorial urged the state legislature to stay on track and not get diverted from pursuing important reform legislation, such as legislative redistricting. We share the Inquirer’s concern that this legislative session is winding down with precious little action on some critical issues that affect the way we run our government.

Our primary concern is Merit Selection of appellate judges. Bills to amend the constitution have been referred to the Judiciary Committees in both houses. Passage of such bills is the first step toward letting Pennsylvanians vote in a referendum on how to choose appellate judges.

But first, we need a hearing. Please tell your legislators — particularly Judiciary Committee members and committee chairs Senator Greenleaf and Representative Caltagirone — that you want a chance to vote on changing how we choose appellate judges.

Listen to Lynn Marks, Executive Director of PMC and PMCAction, discuss Merit Selection and the reasons we need to change the way we select appellate court judges on Lincoln Radio Journal. Talking with host Lowman Henry, Marks discussed the problems inherent in judicial elections, the benefits of Merit Selection, and the need to get this issue before the public.