After weeks of sober, serious and secret deliberations, Florida’s judicial selection commission emerged from behind closed doors to present Governor Charlie Crist with its list of approved names to fill two state Supreme Court openings. Like other states that utilize so-called “merit” selection, the power to pick judges for the high court in Florida rests not with an elected governor accountable to the nearly 5 million Floridians who voted in the last election, but with an unelected committee controlled by lawyers that is accountable to no one.

For his part, Gov. Crist expressed frustration with the commission’s work, noting that he had “several concerns” about the list of names and would continue “looking at what my options are.” According to The St. Petersburg Times, while the commission could have recommended up to 12 candidates for the two openings, they only sent eight, severely limiting Gov. Crist’s options for shaping the direction of the court. In an editorial, the Times writes:

“The effect is to give the commission more control and the governor less.”

But that’s precisely the point of “merit” selection: taking power away from the people and their elected representatives and handing it to a small group of legal elites.

Not surprisingly, governors in other “merit” selection states – including Missouri and Tennessee – have also balked at being forced to swallow the dictates of judicial star chambers. But Florida’s list of candidates also raised the ire of the president of the state ACLU chapter, who pronounced herself “terribly disappoint[ed]” because the commission failed to nominate any women or African-American candidates.

Florida’s judicial selection commission has managed to produce a frustrated conservative governor, a disappointed liberal ACLU official, and an angry news media demanding it go back to the drawing board to come up with a more diverse list of nominees. So much for taking politics out of judicial selection.