Where do judges come from?
Paul Jacob on Townhall.com on "merit selection" of judges in Missouri.
So, just who makes up the Appellate Judicial Commission? How are they chosen?Sidenote: Paul Jacob is facing up to ten years in prison for the heinous crime of Circulating Petitions. No exaggeration - see Wall Street Journal story here.
Good questions. The commission is made up of three members elected by the Missouri Bar Association and three members selected by the governor — each serving six-year terms. The seventh member? The sitting chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.
Is it a good idea to have our most powerful judges determined largely by a private organization? Shouldn’t we at least alternate the private group doing the choosing? One year it could be the state bar, another year Wal-Mart stockholders in the state, another year the Rolla Bowling League. In leap years, a statewide group of local bar owners might do the selecting.
And why have the governor appoint people to a commission which appoints people for the governor to appoint? A tad circuitous, no? And why have someone on the current court deciding who sits on the future court?
You can see what this seems like: an insider game, a stacked deck. ...
The assumption (common amongst supporters of the Missouri Plan) that the Bar Association is a public service group with a disinterested agenda, unaffected by biases, and exempt from corrupting influences, is hard to maintain with a straight face. Lawyers present a faction. They have an interest in keeping the law complicated, and expanding state involvement so to require suit and countersuit and consultation and a hundred other ways to put numbers into a billable hours column. It is far more reasonable to argue that the Bar is the last group one wants in charge of a judicial selection process, rather than the primary group. It is a guild, and its interests can be as antagonistic to the public interest as any group’s can possibly be.
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