Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly has an important column today about the efforts by Kansas voters to dump the state’s judicial selection Star Chamber – where lawyers meet in secret to choose judges – and bring citizens back into the process.

In bellwether Johnson County (outside Kansas City), citizens succeeded in placing a proposition on the November ballot that would establish democratic judicial elections for judges in the 10th judicial district, “instead of having them chosen by the lawyers” – a reform that would send “shock waves” through the legal establishment. Schlafly writes:

“Kansans are asking, why should the lawyers have such extraordinary control over the selection of judges who will then rule on cases brought by the lawyers who gave them their jobs?”

As readers of this blog know, other states are asking the same question.

Kansas voters are incensed because the state judges ordered the legislature to raise taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars – a stunning example of judges intruding into the domain of elected legislators. Voters in Johnson County, Kansas now have a chance to send a message to the rest of the state: seize power from the lawyers and reassert the right to hold judges accountable in democratic elections.