judgesonmerit.org

According to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, things are getting a bit confusing in Missouri.  We’ve reported before about ballot initiative efforts related to changing Missouri’s Merit Selection plan.  That effort focused on eliminating the nominating commission and giving the governor the power to appoint any one of his choosing.  Now, the same group behind that effort has filed a second ballot initiative that conflicts with the first and seeks to have voters directly elect judges.

It’s not clear why the second initiative has been filed, and the group behind the effort — ShowMe Better Courts — has not explained which new plan it would prefer.  In addition, as the Post-Dispatch reports, that proponents of the current selection system have criticized ShowMe Better Courts “for failing to point to any real problems with Missouri’s judicial system, in terms of bad judges or bad rulings.”

We think this muddled effort should raise the suspicions of the Missouri public.  Information and honest discussion are critical in reform efforts, but those pushing for change in Missouri won’t say what they really want.

An editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch echoes a warning sounded by Missouri Chief Justice William Ray Price, Jr. last week to the Missouri Bar Association.  Chief Justice Price urged the assembled lawyers to work to maintain the independence of the judiciary.  Without such a defense, he argued:

[T]he judicial branch of government quickly could erode into a commodity that is “bought and sold by the political power brokers of the moment.”

The chief justice warned of special interests “who demand that the courts rule on the basis of their particular ideological views.”

“For them, justice is determined by whether their special cause wins,” he said. “(O)ften they see no further than their own interest” and “know no limits to the extent they will fight or spend money to get their way,” even though it “may destroy the legal system in the process.”

Chief Justice Price urged the lawyers to educate the public about the need for an independent judiciary:

The task, he said, is to “focus the attention of the people of Missouri on the fact that, when they need a lawyer or when they must appear before a judge, the courtroom should not already be tilted against them by some special interest, no matter how rich, no matter how powerful.”

The editorial agreed with the Chief Justice’s assessment, calling it “right on the mark.”  Although the Chief Justice did not comment on the various proposals that have been put forth to amend Missouri’s Merit Selection system, the editorial writers called the efforts to change the system the “greatest single political threat to justice in Missouri.”

The editorial called for lawyers and nonlawyers to work together to preserve Missouri’s judicial selection system.  This makes sense to us — judicial selection is an issue that affects everyone.  That’s why we’ve been working to promote a dialogue in Pennsylvania about whether to change the way we select appellate judges and move from an electoral system to Merit Selection.