Tennessee’s “current judicial selection process is a perfect storm of special interest control, closed government and lack of accountability,” says Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey in a well-argued oped in the Tri-City News (TN). Ramsey clearly spells out the problems with judicial selection Star Chambers – not just in Tennessee, but in all states that have experimented with this undemocratic system for selecting powerful state judges.

• Special interests control who sits on the bench. As Lt. Gov., Ramsey can appoint eight members to the judicial selection commission, but “six of those – by law – must come from the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association … and the District Attorneys General Conference. This means that 75 percent of those who pick our judicial nominees are selected by special interests in the legal community.”
• The commission of special interests meets in secret and “refuses to open its meetings and deliberations to the public.”

Ramsey pushed a reform proposal that would have “removed special interest control of the nominations but still allowed legal groups to submit names, though neither I nor the speaker of the House would be bound by their list.” He also joined Governor Phil Bredesen in calling on the commission to come out from behind closed doors and meet in public.

While special interest groups managed to kill all reform attempts, the state legislature failed to reauthorize the judicial selection commission. As a result, the Star Chamber is now operating under a one-year sunset provision, and Ramsey has pledged to “continue the fight to reform the commission in 2009.”

Unelected, unaccountable judicial selection commissions which completely insulated from the people inevitably come to see their power to pick judges as a sacred right, not a public service. The people of Tennessee are lucky to have a champion of democratic reform like Lt. Gov. Ramsey.