Litigation

Are Judicial Reform Proposals Ahead in Kansas?

By Peter Hardin

Will the method used to select Kansas Supreme Court justices emerge as an issue, pushed by conservatives, in the upcoming gubernatorial election?

An article in the Wichita Eagle suggests that may happen, although it’s not certain yet. U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican running for governor, has his eye on proposing changes but has not released details.

A focus of debate in the article is the nominating commission used to recommend candidates to the governor in Kansas’ merit selection system. The panel is made up of five lawyers and four non-lawyers, and Kansas is the only state where attorneys nominated by their fellow attorneys have a majority on the screening commission, according to the article.

Stephen Ware, a law professor at the University of Kansas, questioned this procedure. ?You have basically 2.7 million people in Kansas who have no vote in that election (of the attorneys on the commission) and 9,000 people who get to vote,? he said.

But Malia Reddick of the American Judicature Society pointed out that justices face the voters every six years in retention (up-or-down) elections. This gives voters a say about who sits on the state Supreme Court, she said. Her group is a partner of Justice at Stake.

State Rep. Lance Kinzer, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has ideas for reform. He protests that lawyers have “too much control over the nominating process” in Kansas. Kinzer has floated the idea that state Supreme Court justices be selected in a fashion more like that used at the federal level, with nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate.

Kansas Bar Association president Glenn Braun defended the current process as working well and as having its origins in efforts to remove politics from the selection process.

To learn more about merit selection of judges, check out Justice at Stake’s issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on August 11, 2010 (boomark / email).