NEWS CLIPS

Legal skill, not party, must drive selection

Qualifications, diversity should be top priorities.

Forget the words liberal and conservative.
There are only two questions that Gov. Matt Blunt should consider when choosing the next Supreme Court justice.

Is the person qualified to make fair and impartial decisions based on the law?

And, if and only if the answer to the first question is an unqualified yes: Does the person’s addition to the court make the Supreme Court more diverse?

Various groups whose agenda calls for dissolving the historically effective and fair Missouri Plan for selecting judges have weighed in regarding the three choices of the Appellate Judicial Commission to replace former Justice Ronnie White on the state’s top court. Blunt will now choose from three judges: Nannette Baker, Patricia Breckenridge and Ronald Holliger. All three are appeals-court judges. Two were nominated to the court by Democrat governors, one by a Republican.

But at this point, whether there has historically been a D or an R after the judge’s name should be immaterial.

To his credit, Blunt has responded to the nominees without any of the political bluster that various critics of the Missouri Plan have put forth. Blunt rightly has requested a great deal of information from the Appellate Judicial Commission to help him make his decision. Indeed, if there’s a criticism of the commission at this point, it’s that it appeared to violate the state’s Open Meetings law in not posting the time and location of its meetings properly. The commission’s excuse — that it was protecting the anonymity of the judges — is the same sorry excuse used by the University of Missouri Board of Curators during its bungled presidential search. Such secrecy clouds the process, and we hope the Appellate Judicial Commission properly responds to the governor’s request for information.

Then, the proper step for the governor is to forget all the noise about liberal or conservative and look at the nominees’ court rulings through the prism of proper application of the law. Each of the finalists has the sort of experience that is worthy of a nomination to the highest court in the state. Their body of work should give the governor enough information to choose the best and most impartial legal mind from the three.

If all three display a similar standard of excellence, then the governor would be right to consider diversity in replacing the court’s only black judge. The governor has said he’ll give this decision the serious consideration it deserves, including meeting with each candidate and poring over their legal backgrounds. That’s the right approach. Much as he did recently when he made a principled decision in vetoing the bloated Quality Jobs bill that many in his party urged him to sign, Blunt should rise above the political chatter in the background and focus on pure legal principles in choosing the next Missouri Supreme Court justice.