Charlie J. Harris, Jr., President of the Missouri Bar, writes that the judge soon to be chosen to fill a vacancy on Missouri’s Supreme Court “will not be beholden to special interests” because he or she will be selected by a commission, not the citizens of the state.

Let’s follow the reasoning here… Under Missouri’s current system, an unelected seven-member panel meets in secret to develop a list of three possible candidates for a judicial seat. Three of those seven members are trial lawyers and a fourth, the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, is a member of the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers. The panel’s picks are so partisan that Gov. Matt Blunt fought to reform the commission after it kept sending him the same list of names he had previously rejected because he felt none of the candidates reflected the principles of the people who elected him.

Under democratic elections, Missouri’s judges would be chosen directly by the people. Nearly six million people live in Missouri; more than 2.7 million of them voted in the last presidential election.

So … if a seven-person commission dominated by trial lawyers meets in secret to pick judges, the process isn’t controlled by “special interests.” But if 2.7 million+ Missourians go to the polls and express their democratic preferences, the result is stained by “partisan politics.” Got that?

Mr. Harris is an upstanding member of Missouri’s legal elite, so it’s no surprise he feels his colleagues are better able to decide who should sit on the bench than ordinary Missouri citizens. But don’t be fooled into thinking that Missouri’s judicial selection process is either democratic or non-partisan.