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posted by on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the proven-solutions dept.

The Center for American Progress reports

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) decision to prevent a president of the opposite party from nominating anyone to the Supreme Court, it's doubtful that any justice will ever be confirmed again when the presidency is controlled by a different party than the Senate. That means America will lurch back and forth between extended periods with a understaffed Supreme Court, followed by massive shifts in the law as one party fills a backlog of vacancies.

[...] Several states have shown that there is a better way [than what, it appears, will happen at the federal level from now on].

The Missouri plan

As America struggled through the Great Depression, Missouri's courts were a den of partisanship and corruption. As former Chief Justice of Missouri Michael Wolff explains, judges were "selected in elections in which nominees were chosen by political parties under a patronage system." In much of the state, judges were selected by a single machine party leader, "Boss" Tom Pendergast. Throughout Missouri, "judges were plagued by outside political influences, and dockets were congested due to the time the judges spent making political appearances and campaigning."

Frustrated with their politicized judiciary, the people of Missouri passed a ballot initiative replacing the state's corrupt process with a non-partisan coalition--at least for the state's top judges.

When a vacancy arises on the state's supreme court, a seven person commission consisting of "three lawyers elected by the lawyers of The Missouri Bar . . . three citizens selected by the governor, and the chief justice" submits three candidates to fill that vacancy to the state's governor. The governor then has 60 days to choose among those three names. If the governor fails to meet this deadline, the commission selects one of the three.

Finally, after a year of service, the newly appointed judge must survive a retention election, where a majority of the electorate can cast them out of office--though this only happens rarely.

This method of judicial selection, as well as variants upon it, was adopted by many states since its inception in Missouri.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 13 2017, @04:30PM (#493480) Journal

    It sounds good. The problem is human greed and lust for power. But mostly greed. Corporations.

    It won't happen instantly. Not overnight to be sure. But they will find a way to be able to legally bribe these legislative juries. Count on it. Too much money and power is at stake. And everyone has their price. They will find a way. What it is may not even be obvious to us today.

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:20PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday April 13 2017, @05:20PM (#493502)

    True, we'd need to guard against that. But I suspect it would be far more difficult and less cost-effective to corrupt a one-shot jurist than a career politician. Especially if the penalties for such corruption were severe (treason?)

    Nothing is going to eliminate the influence of the ultra-wealthy, our goal should simply to make sure they don't gain unrestricted control over the government. Well, and perhaps try to prevent the development of such gross wealth inequality in the first place.