NEWS CLIPS

Dances with Judges

Revealing a heretofore unsuspected affinity for Japanese theater, Ed Martin, chief of staff for Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, has compared the maneuvering over a soon-to-be-vacated seat on the state Supreme Court to "a funny kind of kabuki."

Mr. Martin’s metaphor is apt. Kabuki is the painfully slow and stylized form of dance and theater in which the actors appear in heavy makeup. The process of selecting a replacement for Judge Ronnie White, who will step down from the court on Friday, is likely to be just as slow and just as stylized. Already the actors are donning their makeup.

In a recent series of press announcements and speeches, Mr. Blunt has adopted the role of scourge of "activist" judges, i.e., those who let their personal and political beliefs determine their interpretations of the law. The role of a judge, Mr. Blunt says, is "to rule on the law, not write it."

Some of the governor’s political supporters last week formed a new group called the Adam Smith Foundation, which issued this challenge in its opening announcement: "The Missouri Judiciary has been overtaken by liberal trial attorneys who are working with Judge Teitelman and Judge Wolff to rewrite the Missouri Constitution. We plan to educate the citizens of Missouri and work to stop their judicial activism."

Richard B. Teitelman and Michael A. Wolff are judges on the state Supreme Court. In attacking them as if they were election campaign opponents, Mr. Blunt’s allies reveal their true aim: re-injecting politics into the state judicial system — something that the state’s voters tried to do away with in 1940 when they adopted the Missouri Non-Partisan Courts Plan.

This kabuki dance is not about activism or strict constructionism, but about handing power over the state’s judiciary to special interests associated with socially and economically conservative causes.

The proximate cause of Mr. Blunt’s unhappiness with the judiciary was the Supreme Court’s ruling in May affirming that public employees have the right to collective bargaining. Yet by any fair assessment, that ruling was a strict constructionist’s dream, reversing a 1947 Supreme Court decision that ignored the plain language of the state constitution.

Nonetheless, Republican leaders and some business groups have vowed to present voters in the November 2008 election with a constitutional amendment that would modify the Missouri Plan.