NEWS CLIPS

The "Get Teitelman" Bill

In the fall of 2004, a coalition of conservative groups spent $150,000 on a scurrilous campaign trying to persuade Missouri voters to vote against retaining Judge Richard B. Teitelman on the Missouri Supreme Court. The effort failed and Judge Teitelman was retained with 62.3 percent of the vote.

Now, having failed to oust Judge Teitelman directly, some of the same people have decided to go after the entire Missouri Non-Partisan Courts plan. That’s the widely-praised and widely-imitated plan that keeps Supreme Court, Appellate Court and circuit court judges in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas above the ugliness of partisan politics. It was adopted in 1940 after the public got fed up with political bosses in Kansas City and St. Louis controlling judicial elections - and judges.

Under the "Missouri Plan," judges are selected by the governor from a list of nominees submitted by non-partisan commissions made up of gubernatorial appointees and members of the Missouri Bar. After one year on the bench, and every six to 12 years thereafter, depending on the court, judges face retention elections by the public.

One measure of the success of Missouri’s merit-based system is that in 67 years, no Supreme Court or appeals court judge ever has failed to be retained, and only two circuit court judges have been removed from office.

But merit is not good enough for Gov. Matt Blunt and Republican leaders of the Missouri Legislature. They want ideological purity. House Joint Resolution 31, sponsored by Rep. Jim Lembke, R-Mehlville, would change the system to allow the governor to nominate whomever he wanted, subject to confirmation by the Missouri Senate. Afterward, the Legislature, not the public, would decide whether the judges deserve to be retained.

This is such a bad idea, it’s hard to know where to begin deconstructing it. Now that the state has no campaign finance limits, governors could, in effect, sell appointments to the highest bidder. Groups could offer millions in campaign contributions to get political hacks appointed to the bench. Judges would have no true independence, knowing their jobs depended on the whims of single-issue politicians. It would return the state to the bad old days when Kansas City’s "Boss Tom" Pendergast ran the judiciary.

If enacted by the Legislature, HJR 31 would submit the proposed changes to voters in November 2008. A companion bill, HJR 1, sponsored by Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, is just as dangerous. It would prohibit judges from ruling on matters related to tax policy. Never mind that it violates the doctrine of Separation of Powers. Never mind that it could destroy the state’s credit rating because bond houses aren’t thrilled with financial issues being subject to political whim. For supporters, the beauty is that "judicial taxation" is a red-meat slogan for uninformed voters.

If both judicial questions get on the ballot, they might galvanize voters who disagree with judges’ decisions - regardless of how well-grounded they were in the law - on wedge issues such as gun control, taxes, abortion, child welfare, the death penalty and tax policy. A high turnout could well benefit Mr. Blunt and other conservatives on the 2008 ballot. Thus the judiciary is being used as a tool for political ambitions.

If that happens, expect Judge Teitelman to be the poster boy for the proponents. A distinguished jurist with one of the sharpest legal minds in the state, he follows strict procedural points of the law. In so doing, he has found fault with the state’s concealed weapons bill and anti-gay marriage amendments. That makes him "anti-family" to conservative activists such as Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum and Kerry Messer of the Missouri Family Network.

"For a full 23 years, he (Judge Teitelman) worked with the notorious Legal Services of Eastern Missouri," Mr. Messer wrote during the 2004 dump-Teitelman effort.

The "notorious’’ Legal Services of Eastern Missouri provides free legal assistance to elderly and poor people in 21 counties in Eastern Missouri who need help with things like domestic abuse, credit counseling and disputes with landlords. How shameful. There’s also this: Judge Teitelman is legally blind and is the only Jew ever to serve on the Supreme Court. But we don’t suppose that could have anything to do with the opposition.

Any way you cut it, this meddling in the state’s judiciary is unnecessary and destructive. If these disgraceful resolutions are adopted by the Legislature, the state’s voters must show the nation that Missouri is better than its so-called leaders.