judgesonmerit.org

The call for judicial reform took to the airwaves this week when former Minnesota Governor Al Quie joined a panel of guests on KFAI-FM Twin Cities Radio to endorse merit selection, retention elections, and performance evaluation panels for Minnesota’s judges. Quie confirmed merit selection’s compatibility with democratic principles by drawing a stark distinction:

 When you vote for either your legislator or the governor you want them biased to your political view. When you pick a judge you want them to be competent, to be respectful of you, and to be trustworthy so that they don’t come at your case in a biased manner.

Quie then lamented that most judges are elected with little or no scrutiny of their qualifications, and reminisced laughingly at his own earliest voting experiences, when he would simply pick any judge’s name on the ballot who appeared to share his Norwegian heritage. The panel proceeded to discuss the impact of political campaigns and fundraising on the public’s faith in the judiciary, concluding that “you want every citizen to be able to go to court with the assumption that you’re going to get a fair hearing…and you’re not going to have to worry about if you participated in a judge’s campaign or not”.

A merit selection constitutional amendment proposal in Minnesota’s legislature currently has the support of a “robust bipartisan coalition”. Quie nonetheless worries that the amendment is getting lost amongst the state’s fierce partisan struggles and has called on the public to contact their representatives and request action, noting that “our big problem is, will the legislature even take this up?” Pennsylvania’s own merit selection constitutional amendment similarly has received broad bipartisan support and will be the subject of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 1.  We hope that both Pennsylvanians and Minnesotans will be given the opportunity to ultimately decide what system they want to use to select their judges.

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