Our View

Our View

Appoint or elect? The Arkansas judiciary debate

Aww, come on, all you lawyers associated with the Arkansas Bar Association, let’s move beyond this facade of yours that leads us to believe the process by which we, the voters, have to elect our Supreme Court Justices needs to be replaced by you making recommendations and the sitting governor selecting who he or she fits their political agenda.

The argument for abolishing the current process is threefold: “To assure a fair and impartial Court, to create a Court independent of perceived improper influences arising from campaign finances and politics, and to continue the high quality of justices on our Supreme Court.”

The Bar Association’s Task Force recounted the influence of large, dark-money campaign contributions in the past three Arkansas Supreme Court races.

These lawyers said ads from those donors targeted fellow lawyers Tim Cullen in 2014, Clark Mason, this year, and Justice Courtney Goodson in her campaign for chief justice this year.

Let us point out, and make it clear, there is no evidence whatsoever of fault or wrongdoing on the part of the successful Supreme Court candidates in those three elections. Let us also make it clear that while there are accusations floating around of potential misuse of such unidentified attack ads current ethics rules forbid justices from knowing who their donors are.

Nevertheless, there is a strong movement by these lawyers to push plans for a constitutional amendment to separate Supreme Court candidates from campaigns and appoint them to 14-year terms.

As we’ve said, the plan calls for the governor to appoint justices to the nonrenewable terms starting in 2019. The idea is to create a nine-person Judicial Nominating Commission, with members appointed by the political governor, political legislators, the state Supreme Court and lawyers from the Arkansas Bar Association.

Allow us to play devil’s advocate and go over the three above mentioned points to this proposed amendment and pose these questions: What guarantees are in place to assure us of a “fair and impartial Court” when a bunch of self-serving lawyers, a sitting political governor associated with a specific party and a group of elected politicians of party persuasion are deciding who they want to be a high court justice?

What guarantees are in place to assure us there won’t be a unfair and partial Court when, we know, there will be political influence in play from either the Democrats or Republicans in control?

And, what guarantees do we have this particular process guarantees “high quality of Justices?”

Does this Task Force of lawyers mean to tell us that these legislators, lawyers and the governor aren’t persuaded by lobbyists, special interest groups and top level bureaucrats?

Will this selection process allow the voting citizens of Arkansas an opportunity to have a say in who these justices will be, and if not, why not?

While we can agree election process has its own issues of donor influence and many voters with little or no knowledge of those lawyers seeking election to our state’s high court, these lawyers can’t convince us that there is absolutely no basis for our concerns.