A very interesting effort is being made to change the way we select our State Supreme Court justices. Under current law, you and I, as the voters in the state, have an opportunity to elect those we want making decisions concerning the judiciary branch of our government. You may have read one or more articles in the newspaper concerning this topic. It is easy to overlook this possibility of change because it will require a constitutional amendment. If it is handled like the most recent change to the state's term limit law, it can sneak on to the ballot with an obscure title to increase the probability of passage.
It seems the Arkansas Bar Association appointed a task force to make recommendations concerning "maintaining a fair and impartial" judiciary. Apparently members of the Bar Association did not like the outcome of our most recent Supreme Court elections. Much was written concerning the choice of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette over the period leading up to the election. Providing information for the voter to help them make an informed decision is what we expect of our newspapers and there is little doubt the newspapers' reporting had an effect on the outcome of the election of the Chief Justice. Maybe the reporting did not meet the approval of the Arkansas Bar Association or perhaps the candidates were not "approved" by the Bar. The choice of a person to seek an elected office is up to the individual person, assuming they meet the qualifications of the office.
When they make the choice to seek the office, they become subject to a host of influences that may attempt to discredit them, point out their relationships which might otherwise go unnoticed, or the outside influences may even be in support of a particular candidate. These are the realities of our election process. It has a lot of extremely useful input into the outcome, but can also bring in "outside influences" and their resources. We frequently see this outside activity in the governor's election in various states. What we saw in the Supreme Court election was a bit unusual in the amount of money spent by outside interests, generally referred to as "dark money." We see "dark money" influencing national elections and have laws written specifically to guide those who desire to remain anonymous.
The Arkansas Bar Association, like any other organization which brings together a group of professionals of similar training, has it own interest at stake. I do not like the idea of giving up my right to support a candidate for this office because I feel qualified as a registered voter who looks closely at the character of the candidate of my choosing. If I give this authority to a professional group of attorneys who will replace it with a system they refer to as a "merit based system," any knowledge I have of the members of the Arkansas Supreme Court will be completely lost. There will be no reason for the investigative reporters to point out some of the candidates' alliances which I use to help make my decision.
It strikes me as a bit odd that after our recent election where a relative unknown judge came from virtually nowhere to become Chief Justice, that we need a change in how the Chief Justice is chosen. Doesn't our nation need more common sense leaders rather than big name career political figures? When we look back on Donald Trump's rise to prominence in the Republican Party, most people supporting him will tell you they have had enough of the current system of a select few wealthy donors picking our leaders in Washington. And, the U.S. Supreme Court is a group of political party-selected judges whose appointment is intended to follow a pattern established for and by the party in power. The president who nominates them is a member of his or her own political party and the expectation is the newly appointed judge will be of a like mind.
The idea that I can't, we can't, read clearly what a campaign's motives are, seems to me to be an insult to my ability to separate a pretty face, or a lot of mailings, from a campaign's fund raisers' motives.
The proposed change in the selection process has a means of peer review in the recommendations. That, of course, will be subject to members of the same judicial class that put the individual on the court in the first place. It is difficult for me to see how this process of a board selecting the candidates (three apparently), then submitting them to the governor -- an elected political party supported governor -- for him to make the final choice is proper. If the political party issue is such a factor in our upcoming presidential election, how do we avoid getting into the same party issue in our governor's election? I do not believe in lifetime appointments such as we have on the U.S. Supreme Court, but we are constitutionally tied to that limitation.
Perhaps this idea will get lost somewhere in the process of preparing it for a vote of the people. That might be wishful thinking. I do believe in change, even to the point of amending our state laws. What I do not believe in is a series of knee-jerk reactions to results of an election that a few people didn't like. Can't we trust the outcome at polls to indicate how the voters actually feel?
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Editor's note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. A native of Benton County, he is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Editorial on 06/29/2016