Are Lawyers Really That Special?
September 15, 2009
Alaska’s lawyer-dominated “merit” selection system has survived a court challenge, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News and Gavel Grab. The original lawsuit, filed by the James Madison Center, objected to the composition of the state’s “merit” board - namely that a board’s majority is controlled in perpetuity by a single special interest group (the Alaska Bar Association). The state countered that:
” … lawyers deserve an elevated role [in picking judges] because of their special knowledge and that there’s no requirement for judged to be elected or for those involved in selecting judicial candidates to be elected.”
Think about that for a minute. Under “merit” selection, lawyers are considered so “special” that they deserve a privileged role in deciding who will control one-third of state governments. These legal elites are so “special,” in fact, that they should be allowed to carry-on this process with no public oversight and no public accountability whatsoever. So we’ve got lawyers who decide which lawyers get to pick the lawyers that hear cases argued by lawyers.
No one would dream, of course, of arguing that only teachers be allowed to choose school board members … or that only police officers should select county sheriffs. Yet don’t teachers and police officers have the same “special knowledge” as lawyers when it comes to determining who should sit at the top of their professions? And if lawyers, based on their “special knowledge,” deserve an “elevated role” in deciding who should interpret the law, why shouldn’t they have a similarly privileged place in deciding who will write the laws?
Strip away all the nonpartisan rhetoric and good government goo-goo-isms and the case for “merit” selection really boils down to the idea that lawyers are a privileged class in our society who are entitled to more power than ordinary citizens. The failure of the Alaska court challenge to “merit” selection is a setback - but that the case was mounted at all is a healthy sign that people around the country are fed up with being told that the views of legal elites are more important than their own when it comes to choosing our public servants on the bench.