Tennessee Weakens Judicial Star Chamber
June 2, 2009
Tennessee’s governor will have more power over judicial nominations and legal special interests will have fewer seats on the state’s judicial nominating commission. The changes come following votes in the House and Senate to extend the commission through 2012, reports the Tennessean.
Both the House and Senate versions allow the governor to reject the commission’s first slate of nominees and ask for a new one. But the Senate bill has a provision with the potential to break the trial bar’s strangle hold on the judicial selection process. Under its version, the governor can reject both slates and then choose any qualified applicant – a compromise I first proposed here on April 11. This would make the elected governor fully accountable for judicial choices and judges themselves accountable, albeit indirectly, to the people. Allan Ramsaur, executive director of the Tennessee Bar Association, says both versions are OK with him, which should provide enough political cover for House members worried about offending the state’s legal poo-bahs.
Vanderbilt University Law Professor Brian Fitzpatrick noted the significance of this small, but crucial difference:
“No state with a merit system has ever taken the power to select judges away from the commission and given it back to an elected official.”
While both bills cut the number of lawyers on the 17-member panel from 14 to 10, lawyers will still hold a majority – a step in the right direction, but a move unlikely to quiet supporters of democratic elections (like me) who believe special interests have far too much power to pick judges.
Judgesonmerit.org – which has spent 20 years lobbying to revoke the constitutional right of Pennsylvanians to elect their judges – is publicly clucking over this “victory,” but they must privately realize the case for selecting judges in secret by unelected, unaccountable tribunals controlled by legal special interests has been dealt a significant (if not yet fatal) blow.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections, Tennessee
One Response to “Tennessee Weakens Judicial Star Chamber”
Dan,
I think your last paragraph reflects some wishful thinking on your part. Tennessee, after a year of debate and discussion, has decided to maintain a Merit Selection system and has rejected judicial elections. That seems a wise decision to us.