Dan Glickman: Don’t dismantle system for selecting justices

As Kansans, we are rightfully proud of our legacy of thoughtful, forward-looking governance. We were the last free state to join the Union before the Civil War. Kansans such as Dwight Eisenhower and Bob Dole spent their careers making our country safer and stronger.

Our state Supreme Court is part of that legacy. Almost 60 years ago, commonsense Kansans voted for a nonpartisan system for picking justices that would insulate our Supreme Court from political pressure. A nonpartisan commission of lawyers and nonlawyers conducts rigorous interviews and vetting, and sends a list of qualified individuals to the governor, who gets to select one.

But this system, which was put in place after a political cronyism scandal and has given Kansans a stable, high-quality high court, is under threat today. Some politicians want to amend the Kansas Constitution and dismantle its merit-selection system.

The proposals include giving unilateral appointment power to the governor, which would consign Supreme Court appointments to closed-door, backroom politics. Such a proposal would also jettison existing checks and balances within the system, significantly enhancing executive power over the judiciary. Without a vetting commission, it would allow partisan politics to trump selection of qualified judges.

What’s more, if Kansas political leaders considered the partisan breakdown in our nation’s capital, they might reconsider their embrace of a Washington-style system for choosing judges. And New Jersey, a state using the federal-style system for judicial nominations, experienced such partisan gridlock that a high number of vacant judgeships in the state’s busiest county forced the suspension of complex civil trials several years ago.

Another idea is to replace merit selection with contested elections, which would require Supreme Court justices to raise money from attorneys who appear before them. These proposals have failed in other states, and they are outside the political mainstream.

Merit selection has been good for Kansas. By helping to create a stable, high-quality Supreme Court, it has strengthened our business climate. In 2012, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranked Kansas fifth in the nation for the legal business climate of state courts.

The best answer to political tampering with our courts is to uphold the vision of our nation’s founders, one that created a distinct role for judges: to protect the Constitution and decide cases based on the law and the facts, not on political intervention or intimidation.

James Madison, in introducing the Bill of Rights to the House of Representatives, said that “independent tribunals of justice … will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Checks and balances have been the bedrock of our democracy ever since. Our founders knew that the executive, legislative and judicial branches must be equal in order to preserve our liberties and freedoms.

That’s why our courts have stood as a pillar of our democracy for more than 200 years. As an equal branch of government, they have operated accountable to the Constitution and the law, not to politicians focused on winning their next election.

Now is the time to recall this ideal. Why abandon a qualified, independent court for one more vulnerable to every political wind? It’s a dangerous idea. To undercut the foundation of one of our most “independent tribunals of justice” would ultimately jeopardize democracy in Kansas.

This story was originally published February 19, 2015 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Dan Glickman: Don’t dismantle system for selecting justices."