Among The Elites In Minnesota
March 11, 2009
A campaign is on to strip Minnesota voters of their right to choose state judges – a right enshrined in Article VI, Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution. Our friends over at Gavel Grab/Justice at Stake – the group funded by hedge fund billionaire George Soros that is lobbying to abolish democratic judicial elections across America – have a thumb-sucker on the attempt to shift the power to select judges away from the people toward a tiny tribunal of lawyers.
Well-funded groups (like Justice at Stake) are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would “require all judges to submit to periodic professional performance reviews.” Actually, Minnesota judges are already “required” to submit to performance reviews: In a democracy, we call these “reviews” elections.
But a “performance review” isn’t really what Justice at Stake has in mind. The Quie Commission – named after former Minnesota Governor Al Quie – wants to set up two more commissions: A Judicial Performance Review Commission and an Appellate Court Merit Selection Commission.
The Judicial Performance Review Commission will consist of 30 people that “must be respected individuals of outstanding character and integrity and reflect the diversity of the state.” This august panel will have a majority of non-lawyers, but does anyone doubt that when these 30 “respected individuals” convene to pass judgment on a judge’s performance that William the Attorney won’t have more influence than Bill the Mechanic?
Actually, Bill the Mechanic probably won’t be allowed into the smoke-filled room because neither the Governor nor the Chief Justice, who will make all the appointments, will likely consider him, ummmm, “respected” enough to evaluate judges. Minnesota Chief Justice Eric Magnuson, after all, is on record as saying you “need to have a certain level of experience and insight and sophistication to be able to say that a judge got that [ruling] right.” Sorry, Bill.
But don’t judges – like any other public official – serve Bill the Mechanic as much as William the Attorney? And don’t judicial rulings affect Bill as well as William? Ah, the Quie Commission retorts: Bill will still have his say through retention elections. Because the Judicial Performance Review Commission will “not be authorized” to tell people how to vote. Instead, it will simply offer a rating of either “qualified” or “unqualified” for sitting judges, based on criteria such as their “administrative skills” and “communications skills.” Then Bill and other voters get to decide whether to retain that judge. Let’s see how retention elections work in practice:
* In Tennessee, 145 out of 146 judges who have run in retention elections since they were adopted in 1971 have been retained;
* In Missouri, over the past 70 years not a single appellate or Supreme Court judge has ever lost a retention election;
* In Kansas, justices running in retention elections have never been defeated.
There are only two conclusions you can draw from this data: Either the people of Tennessee, Missouri and Kansas are blessed with really, really good judges. Or retention elections are just a sham designed to create the illusion voters still retain power over who will control one-third of their state government.
The Quie Commission proposals – like all the “merit” plans being pushed by Justice at Stake and other powerful special interest groups – are based on the elitist notion that the involvement of ordinary people will somehow pollute the judicial selection process. Maybe they’ll be led like lemmings to pick the wrong candidate because of “nasty, politicized” judicial elections. Or they don’t have the “experience and insight and sophistication” to make a decision about judges in the first place. Either way, there needs to be some kind of “buffer” between voters and their public servants on the bench.