Kansas County Challenges Secret Selection
June 26, 2008
Citizens of Johnson County, Kansas have successfully placed an initiative on the November ballot that would end the secret selection of judges (through a so-called “merit” system) and allow voters to decide who sits on the bench. Justice At Stake’s GavelGrab blog links to a story in the St. Charles County Business Record reporting that some of the grandees of the county’s legal establishment are defending their power to control the courts. In a recent press conference, one member of the county’s lawyer-dominated judicial selection commission protested that commissioners are only “focused on selecting the best person to be judge.”
But the problem isn’t with the good intentions of individual commission members; it’s with a system that gives too much power to a small handful of unelected, unaccountable commissioners who meet in secret to pick judges. Democratic election of judges is the best way to disperse that power to where it belongs – with the people.