NEWS CLIPS

Governor needlessly attacks judiciary

I have never felt compelled to write a letter to the editor. However, the campaign of our current governor and the legislators who are mindlessly following his lead to seize control of our state’s judicial branch forces me to comment. Reading the governor’s and his followers’ groundless attacks on our judiciary, our nonpartisan court plan and our Bar Association alarms me. It should alarm every citizen of this state.
I have been a citizen of Missouri since I was 7 years old when my family moved here from Arkansas in 1959. I have been a practicing attorney in Missouri since September of 1979. I, like all Missouri children, first learned of the "Missouri" plan when I took civics as a freshman in high school. I liked the sound of it, "nonpartisan." It was praised and worked well in 1966; it is praised and works well now.

In the near 30 years it has been my privilege to serve as an attorney in this great state, I have known many attorneys who have selflessly given their time to serve on the Judicial Commission. The attorneys who serve in that capacity are elected by members of the Missouri Bar. The lay people who volunteer their time to serve on the commission are appointed by the governor. The attorneys who are elected to serve on the commission are some of the best people the Missouri Bar has to offer. They, along with the lay members, work countless hours reviewing resumes, taking phone calls, interviewing applicants and attending meetings to select the three member panel to submit to the governor.

The selections sent to the governor are not the result of the four attorneys dictating their preferences to the lay members; far from it. This is no Star Chamber of "secret" selections of "activist" judges, as the governor would have the citizens of this state believe. It is an arduous process, long considered by most in this country to be the best way to select judges by keeping politics out of the process. I was taught the wisdom of this process in civics class as a freshman in high school in 1966. The age-old wisdom of a nonpartisan plan is obvious. This state’s system of choosing its judiciary has produced an honest, competent, politically independent judiciary, unlike many other states that have chosen the governor’s path of politicizing the judicial selection process.

I find it interesting that our governor is the first governor to complain about this time-honored process. In fact, he has appointed several appellate judges during his term without complaint. I wonder, what has changed?

I get concerned when groups funded by out-of-state money attack our judges and the method by which they are selected. What the heck is the Adam Smith Foundation anyway? I get concerned when our governor complains, as no other governors have, that our nonpartisan court plan gives him people that might be "judicial activists," whatever that means. Heaven forbid the nonpartisan plan provide him with a list of qualified individuals not beholden to him who have actually read the Constitution, who pledge to uphold it to the best of his or her ability. There’s a bogeyman for all of our citizens to fear as we say our nightly prayers.

Did you, good Missouri citizens, know that our governor, in his youthful wisdom, has submitted 111 questions to each of the three panel members to be answered before the governor considers their appointment? Have you read these questions? Actually, there are many more than 111 when you consider the many subparts. I’ve read them; they are posted on the Web.

Folks, each of these panel members are already Court of Appeals judges. This means that they have filled out applications, been interviewed and selected by a prior governor for the Court of Appeals job. In other words, these people have been interviewed, investigated, worked to death as judges, and now this governor wants them to give a written response to 111-plus questions that have no doubt been asked time and time again! To what purpose? Can’t he just ask them what he wants to know when he interviews them?

The governor, by submitting these 111 plus redundant questions to these eminently qualified people, can only hope to intimidate them, bore them or further politicize the selection process. Perhaps he wants them to withdraw their names from consideration by forcing them to submit to this rather juvenile request. This ploy is an insult to these three panel members, the judicial commission members who labored long and hard without recompense to provide the governor with his choices, the judiciary of this state and to every citizen of this state.

I, for one, am sick of scare-tactic, hot-button, ideologically driven politics in this country. I want politicians who are problem-solving leaders, not pulpit-pounding ideologues. I pray for a governor and legislature that is truly seeking solutions to issues that are real, like providing affordable health care to all Americans, solving the crises in this state’s secondary education system, global warming and the myriad real, solvable problems that confront this state and this nation. How dare this governor and his lemming legislators attempt to avoid solving real problems while dreaming up false ones that do not require a solution.

We have a competent, independent judiciary in this state that has been, for the most part, nonpartisan for my lifetime and before. The governor’s nonexistent, unproven bogeyman is nothing more than a partisan smokescreen intended to give the governor control over our, the people’s, nonpartisan judiciary. His desire to appoint and control the judiciary is the real bogeyman each citizen of this state should greatly fear!

Pay attention, good citizens, the governor and his bunch are trying to hijack your nonpartisan court plan. Please, write your legislators and senators and tell them to leave your plan alone and get back to work trying to solve some real problems. It will be unnatural for them, but if enough people tell them to, hopefully the message will get through.

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James B. Condry is with Wieland & Condry, LLC in Springfield.

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